Occasional Notes

Do you know what? I love love love summer. This was not always the case -- I used to love fall. I still do, really. There's nothing quite like crisp air and leaves turning and the kind of new beginnings that only those all caught up in the cycle of the school year associate with autumn.

On the other hand, there's nothing quite like hot days and sweat-slick skin and riding my bike with the sun strong on my arms and just-below-room-temperature showers and cold, cold lake and cold, cold beer and sleeping in a tank top and boxer shorts with a fan oscillating next to your bed, either.

So.

I love summer.

I am now qualified to be a high school teacher and I am finished school after seventeen-odd years straight of it, the last three without summer breaks, although I may be thinking about upgrading my qualifications again by getting enough university math credits for a math teachable, which I am only two courses shy of, and which is much more saleable than history and english, which is what I currently have. I have therefore been looking at math courses offered at the university this summer.

(it's not an addiction. i don't know what you're talking about. i can quit school whenever i want to. i just don't want to yet. besides, it's looking like there aren't any such courses being offered, stupid university.)

In other news, I have two interviews coming up in the next two weeks for high school teaching positions in the UK. I am very excited. I am currently working on getting my resume and portfolio up to date and on researching the two schools so that I may impress their respective headmasters with my knowledge when I meet with them in Toronto.

Also very exciting is the article that came out in this month's Professionally Speaking, which is the Ontario teacher's professional magazine. It is on the trip to Kenya. I am not mentioned by name, but they used one of my lessons as an example in there -- only they made it sound like everyone was doing what my teaching partner and I did. They are liars. If you are interested in reading a magazine article written by a liar, see here. Extra points to those of you who can spot the two pictures of me. It's not easy. In one, I have my back to the camera. In another, I am half-hidden and tiny. To further confuse the matter, my sister, who bears quite a startling resemblance to me, is in both pictures as well.

Extra extra points for those of you who find me in the pictures without ever having met me in real life!

Graduation is June 8th. My grandmother is flying out to see it. Today my mother took me shopping for a grad dress (I am, omg, sixteenish). I got a very pretty one -- lightweight white cotton with puffy little sleeves, an empire waistline, and an a-line skirt. There will be pictures, of that you may be sure.

My family went to the cabin this weekend, which was very nice. On the way back, I was looking out the car window at the scenery as it past, only to see, painted bright red on the ancient rocks of the Canadian Shield:

OMGWTFBBQ!!1
I wish I'd had my camera.