Nobody likes you when you're 23

If you don't recognize the lyrics, that's a line from the Blink 182 song "What's My Age Again?"  It's somewhat relevant because I was feeling rather "eh" about turning 23. I suppose that part of the reason is that everyone still thinks I'm approximately 19 years old. I am positive that everyone is going to think that I'm a student at the school that I student teach at.  There is no way that anyone is going to see me and think that I'm old enough to be a student teacher.  Everyone tells me "It's a good thing to look young!"  Yeah, when you're in your 30's or 40's it may be.  But when you're 23 years old and you look like you're 21 at most, it's a little annoying.  Oh well, there are worse  things.  

Anyways, it turned out to be a great 23rd birthday!  My parents came and we walked around Uptown and had a delicious Mexican dinner at Los Potrillos.  When I returned to my apartment after dinner, I discovered that my roommate, Jessie, had planned a surprise party for me! She made a huge bowl of guacamole and brought delicious mini cupcakes from the new bakery in Uptown.  It was a lot of fun. 

I still can't believe I'm 23 years old.  I don't feel that old AT ALL.  I will not let Blink 182 bring me down though. 

It's been a while...

since I've written. Sorry! To be honest, my life hasn't been very eventful or exciting lately. I just go to classes, go to ESL observations, go to the gym, eat, sleep and repeat. However, there are a few major items that are noteworthy/super exciting:

1. Today my dad was able to buy 4 single-day passes to Lolla! It was a pretty stressful event. We were on the phone and both on the website exactly at 10:00 when the tickets went on sale.  But we were both on the stand-by page for almost 20 minutes.  Then when my dad got to the ticket page, they made you log in through Facebook and all of this other nonsense.  In the end, he got them though. Family trip to Lolla, Holla!

2. I'm FINALLY (almost 8 weeks later) crutch freeee! It's wonderful.  I've been biking and swimming at the rec. and loving every minute of it.  I'm so, so happy to be back to working out again.  It's still not running, but at least it's something. AND I'm back to riding Ed (calm down, that's my beautiful black bike). 

3. My parents are majorly spoiling me for my birthday (which is on Saturday).  They brought me an exercise bike for home which I used over spring break.  Then there was 2 gift cards in my birthday card.  Now my dad says he's paying for my Lolla ticket as a birthday present.  To be completely honest, I feel pretty guilty and unworthy of this overspending but hey, I guess I'll take it.  

4. I went home last weekend because Alyssa was on spring break.  It was awesome to be reunited as a family since my mom, dad, and I haven't seen Alyssa since January.  We went to the Variety show at my mom's school and ate delicious meals provided by chef Jeff. 

I promise I'll try to write more often.  A little over a month until I leave ISU for good. Ahh! I'm so scared for my student teaching interview on April 7th. 

Paraskevi

What's a "Paraskevi" you ask? Well, that's the name of my new teaching idol.

Although I am on spring break this week, I have been waking up at 4:30 AM (brutal) every day and spending six hours observing ESL classes at Wheaton Warrenville South High School.  My mom works there and talked to the ESL coordinator (Par) about me coming to do observations.  I need 100 hours of observation for my ESL practicum this semester. Also brutal. 

I wasn't thrilled at the idea of spending almost my entire spring break doing observations.  However, this experience was AMAZING.  Paraskevi (Par for short) teaches ESL 1-2 and ESL 4, both of which I observed all four days which I was there.  The students in ESL 1-2 were reading the short story "The Gift of the Magi."  On day three, she let me work with a small group to read the story.  On my fourth day, she had me teach the class for the entire class period. AH! We reviewed what we had read the day before, finished reading the story, took a reading comprehension quiz, and went over the quiz answers. 

Par kept giving me the nicest feedback such as "We are so glad to have you here!" and "You did so awesome! You're awesome!" Par is such an amazing, passionate, and skilled ESL teachers.  To be honest, before my experience helping out in her classroom, I was somewhat indifferent about the idea of being an ESL teacher.  I viewed it mostly as just something that I could add to my resume.  But after seeing Par teach and getting to teach myself, I obtained a new found love for ESL teaching.  It was definitely an eye opening experience.

I can't believe that I have seven weeks left here at ISU.  I don't want to say too much YET, because nothing is set in stone, but I have a possible student teaching placement that I'm really excited about.  Time is moving too quickly.  I'm scared to be out of college and in the real world, but I'm ready too. 

Athei-uddhism

That's the name on the new religion that I am intenting to create. It's a mixture of Atheism and Buddhism.  Lent started yesterday. I've decided that I'm not giving anything up for the fourth year in a row.  Sadly, I have become unjustly bitter about this whole lent situation.  I absolutely can't stand when people use lent as motivation to start a new diet or something like that.  If I did give something up, I would want it to be something that makes me a better person, but I can never think of something good that falls into the category.  I told Alyssa that I can't stand that all of the sudden everyone is in devote catholic mode when they aren't the other 325 days of the year. I like to refer to these people at "situational catholic."

 

Then, as she usually does, Alyssa called me out on my narrow-mindesness and grounded me in reality.  My wise little Buddha (as I refered to her as after she provided me with these words of wisdom) told me that there isn't any "right" way to do something like religion.  Touche.  I don't even know what I believe anymore.  I don't know what I want to believe.  Buddhism is really interesting and something that I would love to learn more about, but I don't have the resources or time to do so.  My gut feeling when thinking about the future is that I am not going to raise my children in any traditional church setting.  Unless my husband has distinct religous beliefs.  In that case, I'd probably just let him raise our children with his religion because I could really care less.

 

I don't think I would call myself an Atheist, but at this point in my life, that may be the closest religious description of myself that I can provide.  However, I would like to incorporate some Buddhist belief into my (non)following, hense the term Athei-uddhism.