October 28, 2012

Greetings from Michigan!

It has been one crazy fall semester so far and I am now enjoying my fall break in Michigan. The month of October was filled with snowy days, midterms, projects and presentations, choir rehearsals, staff meetings, and my first school concert. Dan and I found a fantastic bar in downtown Denver that is owned by a Michigan alumni. It is called LoDo's Bar and it shows the Michigan football games every Saturday. Last weekend Dan, Tom and I went downtown and watched the Michigan/Michigan State game. It was a fantastic game and we had the perfect seats on the patio of the bar. Dan and I are starting to learn our way around the downtown area and it is always exciting to find new places to visit. Tom is the master at finding great brewery's and restaurants, we will have to go exploring with him more often. There is a Lodo's bar closer to us in the Tech Center but we were told it will full of Ohio State fans, so I don't think we will be going there.

Dan has been very busy with his graduate classes. We went to a potluck dinner at one of the professor's houses in his program and met a lot of the teachers and students. Dan had two midterms and a project/presentation for his classes and is now preparing for his finals. I cannot believe how fast his "semesters" go on the quarter system. It seems like he just started classes and now he's about to finish them. Not only does he have his finals to prepare for but he has a 15 page literary review paper for each of his classes due right after the final. That sounds very stressful to me so I might have to go find a new place to hang out when he is writing those. Dan's job is going very well and he is enjoying the company as well as the people that work there. He conveniently works two light rail stops north on Colorado and then has class one stop further at DU. The public transportation in Denver has been very, very good to us seeing that we only have one car. Hopefully in the spring, I will be able to ride my bike to work so that neither of us will have to use the car very often.

Dan and I have been working on "budgeting", now that we are both getting paid. We have reduced the amount of going out to eat to once a week, we only fill our gas tank twice a month (and we always use our King Soopers card to save money), and I have limited my shopping BY A LOT. Dan is so proud. We split most of the living costs so we are doing pretty well on surviving with two part-time jobs. Our biggest purchase has been our plane tickets for December coming home. We waited too long and our tickets totaled to $900 for the two of them. Next time we will try to buy our tickets in August. Lesson learned.

School is going very well for me, my students and staff seem to really like me :) I constantly get e-mails from parents about how much their child likes choir or music class and it makes me feel really special. I print all of them and put them in my smile file :) One of the best parts about my school is my team, the specials team. The teachers are absolutely amazing and do so much for me! This past week I was really sick with a sinus infection and I was unable to teach a full day so they covered some of my classes for me. Most of all, they helped me with my first grade concert! Being in charge of 80 first graders is a lot of work so it was fantastic having them there to help organize the students and keep them in line. My first grade concert was excellent and I am so thankful that it is out of the way. My students sang four songs "Whacky Do-Re-Mi", "I Like School", "Rhythm is Math", and "I Want to Know". Throughout the performance I had the students tell the audience what the songs were about and how they related to their other classes. The only problem was that I forgot to introduce myself in the beginning so that was awkward. It got even more awkward at the end though because I was sitting on my feet on the floor, so that I wouldn't block anyone's view, and my feet fell asleep. So when the concert was over, I rushed to get up and get on stage to introduce myself and thank people for coming, and I tripped over my own fast-asleep feet! So embarassing. By the time I got on stage, the audience was already halfway out the door. Lesson learned, always talk BEFORE the concert. Other than that, the concert went really well and I am excited for the Veteran's Day Concert because that is going to be with the whole school.

Friday morning, on his way to work, Dan dropped me off at the Denver Airport and I flew home to Michigan. I was sitting on the plane next to someone who was flying to Detroit to see the Tigers Game. I asked him how he managed to get tickets and he said that his son has paid $1,100 for them! I then made a joke "oh, did your kids go to Cherry Creek Schools?" and he said yes. Damn, if only I made that much money. But last night my Dad and I got to watch the Tigers game from the comfort of our own living room, which was great because it looked freezing at the game! I am looking forward to a week of relaxing, visiting old friends, stopping by GV and the ASA house, and spending quality time with my family. I miss Dan and Chai but it feels so good to be home.