I'm sticking with you, 'cause I'm made out of glue

I have a moment to catch up. And there's been a lot.

I started student teaching right after my last post was made, about a month ago. In the last month, I've taught lessons, graded homework, collaborated with team members, eaten lunch in the teachers' lounge, gotten used to being called "Miss Sulok", come home completely exhausted, sat in on parent meetings, been observed by my supervisor, gotten used to getting up around 6:30 every morning, stayed in for inservice days and countless other teacher-y things. It's odd how much you get caught up in everything. I'm paying for the opportunity to do this, but have no problem at all spending over 40 hours a week working on school things. It's a great learning experience. Being at school all day is so different from being there for twelve hours a week, as I've been for the last four semesters. So different.

So I've been keeping busy. I've taken over the morning language arts half hour, spelling, a FOCUS group (for which I had to create a mini-unit on author's purpose), and Monday I start math. I'm pumped. My cooperating teacher's really sweet to work with and she's given me a lot of great ideas. I still feel really quiet around her, but I'm starting to open up a bit more. She called me "Mouse" yesterday instead of her usual "Sweetie". She often tells me that I'm too nice, too. I said, "Kym, what am I going to say? 'God, Kym, you're doing an awful job. I'm learning nothing at all and this has been a horrible experience.'" The way I said it, it came out kind of funny and she laughed.

Outside of school, life's been good as well. Things are oh so nice with Zac, and I'm feeling quite good about everything else too. I'm working to find a subletter for my apartment and I've gotten a few people who want to come see it already, even though I put down April as the time it's available. Unfortunately, my vacuum started smoking this morning when I tried to clean my apartment for showing. I think I messed up the belt when I cleaned all of the hair off of the bottom of the machine. Wah waaaah. Zac's going to let me use his to finish the job, though. We're going to look at an apartment on Tuesday. I think that'll be good.

I did some life downsizing on Thursday, when I sent an email to the people at the UW Children's Hospital saying that I wasn't going to be coming in to volunteer Thursday nights anymore. I felt an immediate sense of relief (moreso after they emailed me back and weren't enraged) at the sudden lack of something besides Lost to steal my time on Thursday nights. That, and finding out that my tax return's going to be quite nice made Thursday a really nice evening. With that and Sean giving me my security deposit from the place on Regent, I'll be able to survive until I'm done with student teaching.

Oh! I've got a summer school job lined up. I had the interview on Friday, and it was mostly just a matter of agreeing to do it. I'll be teaching remedial math and reading to either kindergarteners or first graders for about four hours a day from June until the middle of July. I'm kind of pumped. I've been looking at and starting to apply for jobs, as well. I'm optimistic about the whole search.

Zac and I played laser tag with some of his friends for the first time last night. It was a lot of fun! We both got better as the night went on, he moreso than I. I can definitely see the appeal of it now, as I started to feel more competitive about it as the night went on. There were a lot of young children there to hate, too.

It's funny-- I only touch upon the topics that I find to be the most personally relevant, aside from the teaching stuff. There's a lot to hold onto just for myself. All mine.