Happy Birthday to me! 

I got a great birthday present today - a job! I am very exciting. It is all pending a background check and my references, but I am not worried about that. I will be an ESL teacher in an elementary school in the next city over from where I am living. It will be challenging, but I think it will be fun also. I am sure I will have many stories to post about that in the future.

My brother was great and threw a little party for me this past weekend. It was fun. Then this weekend I will be in Nashville. Then off to reality and the working world.

So I took my test on Saturday for the Mass Teacher's License...and we'll just have to wait until the end of October to know how I did. I am really not sure. I didn't feel well about the ESL section, but maybe I will be lucky. The whole test took me about 7 hours on Saturday, from 7:45 in the morning until 4:30 in the afternoon (thankfully we were given a lunch break). I was happy to be finished - and even an hour early!

Now I am busy again applying for different teaching jobs and hoping someone will finally be desperate enough for a teacher and hire me without my initial license. 

I am still enjoying my classes and even enjoy the multitude of reading we have to do for each class. Its a topic I enjoy, so its keeping me entertained. The most interesting (and unexpected) is that I am learning Chinese in my Second Language Acquisition class. We just spend about 30 minutes at the beginning of class each week, so I won't really know much. But I feel I will have a good base knowledge of the language, if I ever decide to try to study it on my own. So far I can say hello and goodbye. I have to learn a few more sentences that are part of an initial greeting for tonight's class, but once you get past two words I am lost! 

done

I have hit a breaking point in studying I think. I am done! Not that I should be, and not that I feel confident in my knowledge that I don't need to any more. I just don't want to. So I am taking a break on my computer, getting some other stuff done, and then I will study a bit more before going to bed. Tomorrow night I am free. I will even watch a movie! I am so excited.

Tonight I made an apple raspberry crisp because I needed a break from studying. It actually turned out pretty well.  My grandfather was hesitant of the "strange combination" at first, but I believe he was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. All we were missing was some good ole vanilla ice-cream. 

puppy

Instead of studying this past weekend I had the privilege of taking care of my wonderful nephew

and his new puppy!

Owen isn't quite sure what he thinks of the puppy yet.

And is much more interested when the puppy is sleeping and not trying to play.

my grandpa

I am not doing a good job studying right now, so I thought I should actually do something useful and update this.  I wish the stories I think to write on here could just magically appear, but so far that is not possible, and unfortunately you, the reader, will just have to wait until I find a better system to my life here before I update this more often.  

Now on a funny note and to show the state of my mind right now I will tell you what I was just doing in my attempt to "study." I have made up about 100 index cards with the most necessary information (hopefully) I need to know for my test on Saturday. I just finished the cards and instead of reading through them I just kept quickly flipping them like you would a flip book where the pictures move if you flip fast enough. Well I could get any pictures to come out, but I wonder if my mind still retained some of the words on the cards. I doubt it and will try to avoid this study method for the future.

On another note, I think my grandfather is a pretty amazing guy. For those of you who don't know, I moved into his house with him a couple of weeks ago. He is about 84 or something close to that, and he is amazingly active. I never see him during the day while I sit here at the table studying hour after hour. He goes to meet his friends for coffee at 8 every morning (I just realized this yesterday, as I hadn't woken up that early here, before this week.)  Then he spends his day busy fixing this or that, helping a friend cut down a tree, golfing with his buddies, mowing the lawn, and who knows what else. Usually around 4 or 5 he will come inside and say, "Well, I think I will call it a day." He then will read, watch the news, and maybe check his stocks and play some solitaire on the computer for the evening. I hope I will be that energetic and active when I am his age. 

The other night, as we were watching the news about Ike, he recalled a bad storm that hit this area in 1930. At that time he was going to trade school to be a carpenter. The storm was so bad that they couldn't drive all the way home, stopped about half way, and ended up walking home the next day, as there were too many trees down to drive.  This story led to him telling me about his Navy days, and spending 29 months on a ship in the south pacific, without a trip back to the states during that time.  His longest stint being on board the ship for 6 months without ever walking on land. Bombs and artillery were heard most hours of the day. As soon as he came back to the states, he took a month leave, came home and married my grandmother, whom he was engaged to. They had each been writing letters every day to each other while separated. 

I had never heard those stories before, or if I had, I had forgotten them. I look forward to hearing more stories and finding out about the many adventures of my grandfather.

I love getting to know my nephew

He is even cute when he is crying

my new place of residence (view from the back)

my new mode of transportation

Some friends I really miss

I think I am officially overwhelmed with life right now. I started grad school last week and the first class was a blast. I got my book for the class in the mail today, and its big, but I think it will be fun to read. The problem is that I should probably read it, along with three other books I just bought, in the next two weeks. That is a daunting task. I don't know where I ever got the idea that taking the Mass teachers license test was a good idea. Who thought I could do this? The more I read, the more I am getting worried. But I have paid for the test, so there is no turning back. (Otherwise I might have cancelled and called to see if the job I turned down last week was still available.) I am confident that this is the path I should be taking for today, who knows what tomorrow will hold.

Now I just need to figure out how to be more focused and not fall asleep when I open a book.

On a side and happier note, I found a small lake about a half a mile away from my new abode and enjoyed running the trail around it this morning.

I have my second class tomorrow night - language syntax - don't think it will be as much fun as my first class.

grad school starts today

So I am having trouble focusing on anything. If I am home, and I get on my computer I am distracted by the internet and bothered by the solitude. So today I decided to head out to my grad school class a bit early and stop by a Panera to work on my computer. (They have free internet and its only $1.70 for a never ending cup of coffee.) But here I am distracted by all the conversations going on around me...and now I have to go to the bathroom and I am not sure to leave my computer here or not.

A bit earlier there was a family sitting next to me and they were speaking another language. I kept listening trying to figure out what they were speaking....always hopeful to find a fellow albanian speaker. Then my phone rang and my friend from Kosova was calling me. I preceded to speak Albanian on the phone....not even thinking about it. After I hung up, the people next to me asked what language I was speaking. Gosh, why didn't I just ask them first. I found out they were speaking Hebrew, which would have been my guess due to the throat sounds. They told me they were trying to figure out what language I was speaking, as they know many different languages. I explained that Albanian is like none other, and began sharing a bit about my previous five years.

Speaking of the Albanian language, I went out on my mom's boat on Monday, and while cruising through a pretty area I saw a boat named "Kismet." I thought, hmmm, thats albanian for "fate." The first time past the boat I didn't say anything, but the second time past it I asked what the name of their boat meant. I found out its not only Albanian, but also Turkish, with the same meaning.

Well I have my first class as a grad student in an hour. I am not sure if I am ready to be a student again. But I am surely ready to be doing something and meet some people. Wish me luck!