Praise God, fall break is this week! I can't tell you how long I've waited for that! Unfortunately, it's only officially on Friday. Lucky for me, I don't have Thursday classes, so I end up with a four-day weekend after all!! Sometimes I get lucky on these things...not always, but sometimes! :) So far, my only real plans are to get my hair cut & possibly sleep in once or so, but you know as well as I do that anything can happen, so we'll see what happens!
I just received news of our second placement for observations, but I still don't really know much about where I'll be going because our placement sheet only gave us contact information for the principal of our assigned school, and he'll give us our teacher after we contact him. It's a little irritating to jump through the extra hoops, but I'll figure it out! This experience will be at a middle school in the OKC area, so it will be totally different this time! Nevertheless, I'm still excited to see what will await me this time!
One of the facets of education majors nowadays is the Portfolio which we have to complete at various phases of our Professional Education courses. We have to complete three submissions during the span of our junior and senior years, as well as take three certification tests and apply for state licensure. The good news is that I have already taken one test (the OGET) back in April, and I only have one Portfolio submission during my junior year! (Everything else will take place at different phases of next year.) This is, by far, the easiest submission we will have, and I am almost done compiling my required materials. It is all done in an electronic format, which makes the process much easier, because some things are as simple as copying and pasting them in from a Word document. Thanks to some help from my friends from my education classes, I finally figured out how to navigate the website & make everything look like it's supposed to! Here's hoping I'll be approved on this submission and won't have to go back to fix anything!
I also went and talked to my adviser last week to figure out which classes I will need to take next semester. As far as I can tell, my classes will be pretty math-centric until my student teaching semester, but I welcome the change only because I'm getting burnt out on reflection papers, writing assignments, and other stuff of the sort. I will be taking fifteen hours again next semester, with twelve of the fifteen being math classes of some sort. One of the classes will be a math history class and another will be an upper-level statistics class, so I don't feel like either of those classes are anything I should worry about! (I'm also taking a math teaching methods class, in case you were wondering.) I can't remember the other classes right now, but it's okay. So out of all of this, there's a good news/bad news part to this. Bad news is that I will have to take a summer class, which pretty well changes my plans, but the good news is that if I take one summer class, I won't have to kill myself with fifteen hours of math classes next semester and eighteen hours overall! I'm not a huge fan of summer classes, but I'd much rather do that and keep my sanity in the process. After making that decision, I have heard plenty of good things about summer classes at OSU from my friends, so I believe I'm doing the right thing. Oh yeah, I am officially pursuing a double major in Secondary Math Education and Math, which sounds super ambitious, but really isn't, because the math education degree is essentially a math degree, minus one class. Obviously, I'll pick up one class that will help me earn my math degree, and all will be well with the world...I hope!
Last week, the international student groups hosted an international food festival during lunchtime. A guy from church is from Africa and is quite involved in one of the groups, so he invited us to visit him there and try some great food. I was pretty excited about the event, and it didn't disappoint! I decided to step out of the box and try foods that I have never tried, as opposed to getting tacos from the Hispanic students or Chinese/Japanese from their respective organizations. Kofi suggested that I try the chicken sate and jerk chicken, which are Indonesian and Jamaican, respectively. I LOVED both dishes immensely and have been scouring Pinterest to find some good recipes so that I can recreate their goodness! The best part about the chicken sate was the peanut sauce that was served with it...kind of a sweet and savory blend, if you've never tried it. I also tried some Argentinean cookies with a dulce de leche/coconut filling, and some Sri Lankan cashew rice, which were both equally delicious! Once again, OSU campus events are totally awesome and worth attending, especially when you have friends to go with to these events!
This week, I managed to run into one of my church friends while I was walking to class. I love seeing friends when I expect to see them, but there is nothing better than randomly meeting up with a friend outside of your usual context! After getting over the initial surprise of seeing each other, she and I had a great chat before we had to go our separate ways for class. Even among the crowds of OSU, there's always a friend close by!
There are some huge things coming up for my family in the next two weeks...First is my dad's shed-warming/hair shearing party next Saturday. I think that it will be a great time, complete with smoked meat, good people, and fireworks! If you're in the area, you should definitely stop in for supper, because we'll have enough food to feed a small army, and we'd love to have you! :) I can't believe it, but my dad is ready to cut his hair...mom is hoping that he will be getting his long-haired mountain-man look out of his system after this time of growing his hair out! Even better, the following week, Gina will be having baby Jake!!!!!! I am SUPER excited about this, because I LOVE babies and am ready to be able to hold my adorable baby nephew for the first time!! I'm not sure if Andy really knows what is about to happen, but I've been saying lots of prayers that he will adjust just fine, so here's hoping! (Andy has a tendency to gravitate towards Gina, which is the main reason why he might have a rough time with Jake coming.) Wyatt seems pretty excited, although he pretty much has the big brother gig down pat. Hopefully, he'll be able to show Andy the ropes soon enough! Once Jake is here, I'll definitely be posting LOTS of pictures, so don't worry about that!
I vaguely mentioned joining an intramural football team at church a few weeks ago, but I hadn't mentioned much else since. For posterity's sake, here's how that's going...Right now, I believe we are 2-3, but one of our wins came from a rain cancellation. In happy news, we won this past week's game and have earned our spot in the playoffs, which, apparently, is unprecedented for our team! I have finally become comfortable with playing and know what I'm supposed to do while out there. As it turns out, my strength is playing defense and "blocking" people. I say that only because we aren't supposed to make much contact since it is flag football, but let's be honest, there is still lots of contact! I am having a blast, and I am so glad that I decided to go outside of my comfort zone and try this!
Oh yeah, I also ended up joining the church's intramural soccer team, only because they needed more girls or they risked getting fined...and we have lots of fun people on the team! Obviously, I've never played soccer and have even less of an idea of what the rules are as opposed to flag football, so that made for an interesting first game! Thank goodness for the guys on our team, who are all great players, and were sweet enough to give me a few pointers before the game. Our soccer team is doing quite well, as we are 2-1, although we should have been 3-0, but no one asked us. I never realized how much stamina soccer requires, because I almost passed out after running the field a couple of times. (I should really start running again, btw.) I also realized that soccer really is a contact sport, even though I always thought that it wasn't, for some reason. I mention this because I have managed to get hit by the ball in some way or another a few times. This week, I was playing defense on this guy who was right next to me, and he was gearing up to kick the ball. Let's just say that I underestimated his power, and the ball proceeded to connect with my thigh. I was told that it ricocheted a good twenty feet or so, but I'm really not sure because I was staggering off the field at that point, trying not to cry, cuss, or make any more of a scene than there already was! (I can see some humor in the situation, so it's okay if you do, too!) It happened right before halftime, but that was the extent of my playing time, because my leg was throbbing. The good news is that I'm just fine, minus the massive bruise I obviously incurred...
If you look close enough, you can even see a honeycomb pattern in the middle of the bruise!
Okay, so I've left you hanging long enough on the big news portion of my life: I found a new job!!! (If you thought that I went out and eloped, or more realistically, found a new man, I'm sorry to disappoint you...I'm nowhere close to either of those things happening!) Yes, just when I figured that I'd probably never find a good job until Christmas break, something presented itself to me, just like I hoped it would! My job is at an OSU apparel store that is right next to campus and is owned by a lady from church. I am really hoping that I can keep working there until I graduate. If that would work out, I will be able to "land" for a little bit and not keep jumping from place to place! I don't start until the end the month, but I am a little bit sad to have to give up quite a bit of my free time, but I also know that I really need a job, so I'm willing to make that trade...and the store's hours aren't totally unreasonable. The only downfall of this job is that everyone works all day on game day, but it makes sense, because those are the store's busiest days. (Honestly, I'm pretty prepared for this after having worked the register at the quilt store's Second Saturday event...if I can survive that, then I can survive almost anything!) In good news, I won't be starting until after Homecoming, so I'll get to go to walk-around, but I probably won't go to the game, because that's the same day as Dad's party. I'm sad that I won't get to go to the game itself, but I've been told by all of my friends that Walk-Around is much better than the game itself, so I'll survive!
As a last thought, here's a picture of my adorable nephews in a typical farm kid pose on Dad's haybales...I think it made his evening to see all of them (minus Cole) running along the bales.
I love these crazy, ornery, sweet boys! They're the best! :)
Have a great week!!!
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