Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Wow!

Finally getting as good as Ardith and Jason at not posting!

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Sunday afternoon

It's Sunday afternoon. This morning we went to church and worshiped God together with other believers, then afterwards had dinner with a couple who invited us over. After a nice relaxing meal, dessert and coffee, and plenty of chatting, it seems right to come back and write a post!

Mommy requested a job report. So far there is not much to report on. Snow days have not piled up the work for us in the ESL resource room. The three other girls and I work with students in various areas: one with the math students, one with the science, one with the language art courses, and I'm to help with social studies: history, government, geography. At least it has been fun getting to know my ESL colleagues and getting acquainted with some of the students... not to mention starting the assimilation process. Aunt Vici's right - the public school system is a different culture!

Tomorrow is President's Day. From what I hear, this retains its off-school status for Warsaw, since it was not set aside as a possible snow-day-make-up-day. I think I'll get up at 5:30 anyway - to stay in shape, and to work on my first real homework of the semester, a Psalm analysis paper.

Tonight, beginning around 9 p.m., we're having our first Kaffeeklatsch - an informal get-together to chat in German and (hopefully) drink coffee (except people whom caffeine affects and who are smart enough to know it). Since I was the one who volunteered to get the room use approval, guess I'd better show up with the approval slip. At least it won't be punishment to step outside tonight into these balmy 20- and 30-degree temperatures.

It snowed some more yesterday and today
+ rain predicted for this week
= we may be drowning soon!

Let's see, what else. I'm sure I'll think of something extremely interesting as soon as I publish this. Too bad!

Friday, February 09, 2007

School and Snow

Well, I guess I should finally get this post to the press...

First the news:

They hired me!

Warsaw Community Schools.

Well, here's the story. I took an application home to fill out and worked on that over the weekend. Then the next week came, the Super Bowl, and snow and cold. First the schools put up announcements of two-hour delays, then they canceled school for Monday. Same thing happened Tuesday. Wednesday was just a two-hour delay, so I finally got the application in.

The lady glanced over it and said, "Oh good, you speak Spanish! And French! Wendy was just down here asking if we had anybody..."

I got back home around 6 p.m. to find a note informing me there was a position. It was too late to call, so I called back at 8:11 the next morning (Thursday). Went in for an interview and the next thing I knew, I was signing lots of papers and being handed a tag with my picture and Miss Hoyt.

Miss Hoyt is going to be an ESL Instructional Assistant at the Warsaw Community Highschool!

However, we had to wait till Monday to meet a high school staff person who was out of town. So on Monday I went back to meet her and the ESL team with whom I'll be working. I got a parking sticker that says I'm WCHS staff, and lets me park on the other side of the building, so I shouldn't have to trek through the whole building to find the Resource Room next time. It's important to not get lost on your first day of work, especially in a high school of 2,000.

Today was to be my first day, provided school wasn't canceled. I got up at 5:30. Then school was canceled. The snow wasn't to come till afternoon, but the 40-mph gusts had started in the morning and were already making nice drifts with the snow we had. Of course all the schools canceled classes, and of course Grace didn't (except for night classes, which of course I don't have on Tuesdays).

It wasn't hard to get to school. It was more fun coming back, partially swimming through one intersection and plowing into the driveway. Fortunately, Uncle Rene and Aunt Vici snowblew the driveway once everyone arrived home. It'll probably be ready for more tomorrow.

By that time, school had been well canceled for the next day. Oh good, now at least two of us will be free to clear the driveway tomorrow morning!

Well, till I do get to start work, I can keep practicing the 5:30 wake-up.

In the meantime, we're all surviving the snow fine, getting high and happy on Valentine's Day chocolate.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

5 weeks and 5 days later....

Mee-e-e-e-rrry Christmas!!

Weren't you all promised a bunch of presents?

The Argentina photos are now up!

(Actually they've been up for a couple weeks. Someone just forgot about them. Oops and sorry.)

The link below is my entire Photobucket album. The main page has a few pictures, and there should be a list of sub-albums at the top. You'll want to click on the sub-albums with Spanish titles for the Argentina photos. Please note that these albums provide bilingual captions! - you'll need to click on the photo to read the entire caption.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v603/SharonLHoyt/


You can go ahead and look at anything in my album. It's all safe!
I'll link it on the sidebar as well.

Have fun and stay out of trouble this weekend.