Confused to the Max

I was so thoroughly confused this morning that I thought I had gone crazy. I mean, I really thought I was crazy.

There is a thing at our school called the Learning Lab. This is a place where students can come for extra help if they are struggling in a certain subject. I am the English representative during 1st hour, so I was sitting there grading papers when one of my English students came up to me. His name is David, and he's a really bright kid. I was happy to see him getting extra help on the essay I just assigned.

"Good morning," he said to me.
"Good morning. How are you?" I replied.
"I'm good. I was wondering if you could look at my essay."
"Of course!"

I took his essay to find that it was over Of Mice and Men, a book we have not read in my English class yet. This is where I began to get confused. I looked at David with a confused look, and asked him why he had written his essay on Of Mice and Men. He then looked at me confused.

He said, "Mr. Brich assigned me this essay. I'm in his English class."
Now I was REALLY confused. No, I am his English teacher!
I asked him, "Are you taking two English classes?"
Again, he looked at me with a confused look. "No, Mr. Brich is my English teacher."
"No, I am your English teacher."

I thought someone was playing a joke on me.
A smile came over his face. "You must have my twin brother, David. I'm Paxton."

Well that makes sense. There are two of them, and I was talking to the one I didn't know. The crazy thing was, they look JUST alike and sound JUST alike. They could switch classes for a day and I would never know.

Now that I've read Paxton's essay, David won't be able to cheat and copy his brother's essay for when we do Of Mice and Men.

I Learned the Truth

I actually did something exciting this weekend. A few exciting things, as a matter of fact.

Friday night I enjoyed Sushi...by myself. I was in bed by 10pm. I had to work Saturday morning, and then I came home and watched the Huskers SUCK big time. I left at half time to meet my friend, Britt, to see a movie. We went to Zombieland, and I have to admit I was not totally looking forward to the movie. It didn't seem like my kind of thing; however, it proved to be funny and enjoyable. It's a comedy about four people who are trying to outlive Zombies. It was bloody and gory, and I had to turn my eyes away a few times, but it was a good time. Then Britt and I went to dinner at Pei Wei and got all caught up.

Today, my friend Matt came to church with me. Afterwards, Shan, Jeff, Case and I went to The Old Country Buffet for lunch (not my choice). It was cheap, and we were close to being the youngest people in the place. THEN (the highlight of the weekend), Shan and I went to see WICKED. It was fantastic. It was about a three hour play, but I was highly entertained the entire time. I purchased the tickets about six months ago, and in an effort to save money, I got the cheapest tickets available. We were in the last row in the balcony. But, we were able to see and hear everything just fine, so it was worth it. Go see it if you ever get the chance. All along I've thought the Wicked Witch of the West was a bad witch, but today I learned the real truth about her life. We've all been fooled, and I am happy to know the real truth about that green witch.

I'm ending my weekend watching football. Kari and Sonya have been gone for two weeks in Italy, and they get back tonight, so I'm excited to see them and hear about their trip. Beau has been out of town, but he'll be back next week; I'm anxious to see him again. Hopefully my social life will pick up in the next week or two.

I'm Boring

I don't know what happened, but my life went from exciting to boring in .5! I have no stories to share. I'm sorry for that.

My friend Abby got me a really cool birthday present. It's a 5 Year Journal, and you only write about three sentences per day. It's set up so that over the next five years, you can read what was happening the year before. This is what it looks like:

2009, October 14 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2010, October 14 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2011, October 14 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2012, October 14 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2013, October 14 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next page does the same thing for October 15, etc. As much as I like to blog and write, I hate journaling, so this is perfect for me because it takes about one minutes and it's fun to look back to see what I was up to the year before. The sad part is my life has been so boring that I have nothing to write about. My journal entry for last Friday was this: I spiced up my day by RENTING A MOVIE! Now that's excitement. I'm sitting home along on a Friday night watching a movie, eating popcorn and dreading going to work at Enterprise in the morning.

That is just a glimpse into my boring life. I will try to spice it up again really soon so I have something to blog about.

I did take some pictures this past weekend of Carson, Kye and me painting a Halloween project, but my camera is broken. A girl dropped it a month ago, and now it doesn't work. I was able to take the pictures, but now it won't let me upload the pics onto my computer. So that's sad.

And I did go to to Colorado Springs this past weekend to spend some time with my friend, Brandi. However, it was freezing rain all night and the taxi had over a two hour wait to take us downtown, so we ended up staying at her place and watching TV all night. We did sit in the hot tub and make chili, so that was fun! But again, no pictures to show for it.

And that's my boring life in a nutshell. Thank you for reading my boring blog post.

Cow Tipping and Other TALL Tales

Our trip to Wichita was fabulous! Kari, Abby and I had such a great time, and it was so great to see where Abby and Corey live. Now I can picture it in my head every time I talk to Abbs. Kari and I left in our rental car (Enterprise hooked us up) on Thursday around 5pm. After getting stuck in some traffic, and losing an hour because of time change, we were cruising. We arrived at Abby's house around 3am. We don't look great at 1am, but we sure did have a good time belting our lungs out ot Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. We sure can sing! NOT...

I had no idea what Cow Tipping is (and yes, I AM from Nebraska), so Abby took us downtown to show us the trick.

Downtown Wichita proved to be exciting. We encountered a Hot Chili Eating Contest. The winner at 16 Hot Chili's in eight minutes (they are in the background).

Abby's fabulous husband, Corey.

We were getting ready to head to a Cowboy bar. This night was, by far, the coolest night EVER. Upon arriving at the country bar, we discovered there was LIVE bull riding in the building. About every 30 minutes, ten bull riders tried to stay on the bull for eight seconds. We were literally sitting less than 18 inches from the cage, and we were so close that we had to duck to avoid getting hit with slobber and snot from one of the bulls. We found dirt in our bras upon arriving home. It was SOOOOO cool. One man was stabbed in the face with a horn and a med had to mend his bloody face. It took the clowns five minutes to round up one angry bull who did not want to be put in a cage.

The weather was beautiful while we were there, so we took the opportunity for a photo shoot in Downtown Wichita.

On our last night, we enjoyed live jazz while we ate pizza outside. After dinner, we moved over to a comfy sofa to chat and listen to music.

Kari and I left Wichita Sunday morning around 9am and made it back to Denver around 4pm. We were tired and ready for the drive to be over with, but we had a great time visiting

Abby and Corey!

Everything and More!

Gosh, it's been such a crazy few months. It seems like just last week that school started, but we are now seven weeks into the semester. Parent teacher conferences are next week, and Thanksgiving break is so close. Once Thanksgiving is over, that leaves just a few weeks until Christmas break, which means I am half way through my first year of teaching.

So far the school year has been great. I have a great set of students; for that I feel really blessed. I hear some of my teacher friends talk about theft, pregnancy, and behavior problems they deal with on a daily basis; my biggest problem is a group of talkers. I have a few students I struggle with on a daily basis, but if talking is my worst problem, then I'll be just fine.

The thing I have a hard time with is hearing the stories of my students. They are 14-16 years old, and yet they have some sad stories.

*I have a 15 year-old student with a one-year-old child. Do the math. She doesn't know who the father is.
*I have a student whose dad is in jail.
*I have a student who, in the middle of the night, was pulled out of bed by her mother because she had to escape her husband (my student's dad). They are now living from house to house until her mom can find a job in order to pay rent. My student is looking for a job so she can help her mom pay the bills. They have no health insurance, and her mom has a tumor on her lungs.
*I have a student who has never met her mom or dad; she's been adopted by her grandparents who are 80 years old.
*I have a student whose dad is dying of cancer.
*I have a student with turrets.

The list goes on and on. I have about 125 students, so you can imagine the stories I hear on a daily basis. It breaks my heart, and sometimes I just have to leave the room for a moment to gain control of my emotions. It's not fair. These kids shouldn't be dealing with this kind of stuff. It's hard enough for an adult to deal with these kinds of things, but how can a teenage child learn to cope and move on?

And how can one teacher make a difference? That's why I came into teaching: to make a difference. Sure, I teach English and I hope they are learning how to write effectively, but I am more than an English teacher. I am a guide, a mentor, a wise "old" adult. That's a lot of pressure for a 29 year old newbie.

But I carry on. I come in with a smile on my face, a pat on the back and a story to share. Perhaps I can be the one stable person in my students lives. Perhaps I am the only one to tell them, "Good job." Perhaps I am the only one to hear their story and cry with them. Perhaps I am the only one praying for them. Am I making a difference? I sure hope so!

A Secret

Beau and I have been spending some time together recently. Things are going well, and we're in the process of getting to know each other. We know pretty much all the important things, such as: work, school, schedules, likes, dislikes, living location, parents, siblings, favorite sports teams, etc. I feel like we have a pretty good handle on each other.

Except for one thing. I've been keeping a secret from Beau. It's not that I am purposefully hiding it from him, but it just hasn't come up in conversation. He's never asked me, "So, do you have any roommates?" I would be perfectly honest if he asked that question, but he never has, so it's never come up that I live in the basement of my sister and bro-in-law's house (with a two year old kid).

Last week, I was watching Case one afternoon after school while Shan and Jeff had a meeting. I was feeding Case dinner when Beau called. I chatted with Beau for a while; he asked what I was doing and I told him I was watching my nephew. Case wanted to say hi, so I held the phone to Case's mouth and Case said, "Hi Beau. How are you?" Beau thought it was so cute, and said, "Oh my goodness, he's so adorable!" Since I was feeding Case, Beau could tell I was busy. He said he would let me get off the phone.

We proceeded to say our goodbye's, and then Beau said, "Give me a call once you leave your sister's house to go home."

I replied back with the only thing that came to mind: "OK, I'll call you when I head home."

Shoot, how am I going to explain this one?

Heavy Heart

It's very easy to go through each day doing our own thing and minding our own business. I mean, we each have our own problems. We are all stressed out. We are all busy. We all have our own worries to worry about.

However, my heart has been heavy these past few weeks as I carry the burdens of some of my friends. Generally, the purpose of my blog is to entertain, but I want to use the weapon of mass communication to ask for your prayers for some specific people who are on my mind. You don't know their names and you don't know their stories, but I hope that knowing they are special to me is enough incentive to add them to your thoughts and prayers.

One friend lost his father this week to an unexpected illness. One friend has lost two babies in the past several months. One friend is struggling with some pretty serious stuff. One of my students is searching for a job so she can help her mom make the house payment. One of my friends is in a bad relationship. One of my friends just mourned the anniversary of her mother's death. One of my friends is living with terrible guilt from a decision he made years ago.

Those are just a few of my friends who are going through some pretty serious stuff. I hurt for them. I think of them often. I wish there was something I could do to help take the pain away, but the one thing I can do (and you, too) is pray for them .