Oh, it's NEXT Monday...

Ok, who gets out of school for Lincoln's birthday? Apparently, the kids at the King/Chavez school do. That is why there was no school Monday. But there is also no school on next Monday because that is President's Day. I tell ya, kids these days...

Stomp the Yard was a pretty good movie. A predictable dance movie, yes, but I liked the dancing. I'm such a sucker for dance movies. I think it's because I am a horrible dancer and I like picturing myself in those dance movies. By the time the movie was over, the last trolly (like MAX for my Portland area friends) had already left, so Katie, Kevin and I walked 20 blocks thru San Diego back to our house. Oh, and it was midnight. The strange thing was, I wasn't scared or nervous at all about walking around in a new city at night. Oh sure, there were lots of homeless people sleeping on sidewalks and under overpasses and there was always a horrible stench of urine, but nobody bothered us. It made me nervous how not nervous I was. I'm sure The Momma is freaking out about this, so I'll move on to what else has happened.

Monday I went grocery shopping in Coranado, which is pretty much the beach. I stepped in a warmer Pacific ocean for the first time. Holy crap, I could totally live as a bum on the beach for the rest of my life. I love the sand, the sound of the waves, the way it starts out hard to walk in the sand but then as you get closer to the water it becomes easier. Tomorrow night the team is going to the beach to watch the sunset. A lot of them have never seen the sun set on the Pacific, so I'm happy that I get to share that experience with them. Saturday I'm thinking...a whole day at the beach? Yeah, sounds good to me.

I think that my time with the middle school English is over. The first day I went in to Mr. Collins classroom, there were no students. In the afternoons at the middle school, the students have electives. So of course there would be no kids there. The teacher just handed me a, no joke, 4 inch stack of spelling tests and asked me to grade them. I did nothing but grade tests for 2 hours! I was hoping Monday would be better, but the teacher neglected to tell me that he would be on a field trip that day. So when he shows up an hour later, he says somthing along the lines of "Uh, here are some essays you can read. You don't have to correct them, but you can read them for fun..." Are you kidding me? So I read some and of course I corrected them because some of the students have terrible grammer and some structure issues. Now, I know that correcting papers and having teachers just plain disregard us is not the reason why Americorps is here, so I talked to our project sponsor and told him that I feel that I would be more useful elsewhere in the school. He said he'd talk to the English teacher and the other middle school teachers and see where I would be needed and be able to interact with the kids. So for now, in the afternoons I am a floater and just go where ever they need me, which I am absolutly fine with.

Tomorrow I am going back to the Eco Center for a field trip, but this time with my sixth graders. I'm totally going to try the Segway scooter again. That will be the highlight of the fieldtrip, I'm sure, because it will all be the same information they gave on Friday.

I've gotten used to my surroundings. I no longer loathe our living situation since we do have some permanent spaces where we can keep our crap. We still have to pack up our beds every morning, but even that is becoming less of a hassle. Today and yesterday were two birthdays in our team, so after dinner both nights we had cake or brownies. It's in those moments when the whole team is together and enjoying each other's company that I feel at peace. It's true that these people are becoming like family to me.

I'm going to do some reading now. In the middle school library I found The Giver. I had never read that book in school, so now I'm reading it and I love it. I recommend it if you have not experienced it. Some other teammates are reading it too, so we are going to form a book club and discuss it. I'm almost done, so I'm going to go finish it tonight. Good nite folks!