I want to start off by saying Happy Birthday to my grandpa. This is the first birthday he isn’t here on this earth to celebrate, but I bet he’s having one great party up there.
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Hello again, everyone! It’s the day before the day before the weekend…hooray! 🙂
I had another pretty good week last week, so I’ll just jump right in to Meghan’s Week in Review. Head on over to her site for more WiR fun!
This past week…
- I spent two mornings at the high school in which I’ll be student teaching. I talked more with my coordinating teachers about plans and classes for next year, and I’m getting more excited to start. Both of them are just so nice, and from the looks of it (I read syllabi and observed a few hours), I really like their teaching styles. They have yet to work out my schedule, but it looks like I’ll be teaching at least one Mythology course (an elective for seniors) and a few Honors American lit classes (for sophomores).
- While there, I also got some summer reading. I never thought I’d have a teacher hand me a Bible! 😉 I’m supposed to go through these books, take notes for myself, and then also look at spots that 10th graders would have trouble with. Gladly!
Starbucks not included. 😉
- Over the weekend, I did a lot of relaxing and made progress on a few books. I’ve been reading The Great Gatsby on my Kindle, and then I started Of Mice and Men. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have noticed Ella was with me during most of my reading.
- I cut up the first watermelon of the year, and it perfumed the entire house for a little while. That is probably the best smell of summer.
- I continued perfecting my Green Tea Lemonade recipe. I’m going to give it one more try to triple check the recipe, and hopefully I’ll be able to share it soon!
- Dan took me on a really cool date a few days ago. We often find it difficult to go on dates that are both inexpensive and different/fun, so this one was especially great.
The Grand Rapids Public Museum is currently home to a Titanic exhibit (I think we have it for a few more months) that I had really been wanting to see. So, the other day, Dan and I drove downtown to see it finally. I hadn’t been to the museum in a very long time, so that in of itself was kind of cool. (Plus, buying tickets for the Titanic exhibit gave us general admission to the rest of the museum, which we explored a bit after.)
I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside, but the exhibit was really great. When you arrived, you got an “I.D. card” with the name of a person who was actually on the Titanic, as well as a little bio. My person was from Cornwall, which is actually where some of my family is from!. 🙂 At the end, you looked at the lists to see if you survived. The woman I had survived, but her husband did not.
Overall, the exhibit was really well done. I was a bit of a Titanic buff when I was younger, so I had seen a lot of the pictures before and knew a lot of the information that was shared, but I’d say it is definitely worth a trip. - After that, Dan and I went out to lunch, and then to a local winery for cider tasting. Dan found a Groupon which included four 5-oz. samples for each of us, plus a growler of our favorite at the end, for only $14. Too cool.
I have loved cider ever since I first came across it in England, so this was just perfect. From the left, there was raspberry, original (apple), peach, and cherry. We talked with one of the owners for about an hour during the tasting, and it was just a nice time.
In the end, we got the raspberry cider for the growler. It was Dan’s favorite (mine was the peach, but they were all good). - On a much darker note, I saw probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen yesterday. I watched a deer get hit by a car – and it was still alive after. That’s as much detail as I’ll get into, but it was horrible. I was bawling through the rest of the drive, and I’ve been quite shaken up since.
- My mom successfully helped cheer me up yesterday by listening to Disney music in the car later that day. We also drove past the place where it happened, and I didn’t see the poor thing. There’s a vet’s office right near by, so I’m hoping someone called them and got it taken car of. Still, I’ve had a hard time shaking that image.
- To end on a positive note, yesterday, I visited with my grandma for a bit, and learned a bit of my family history. I have a beautiful leather-bound book that I want to fill out with that information, so I went over there and looked through old pictures and an extremely old family Bible with her. It was really fascinating. We traced back as far as my great-great-grandparents. I was writing down birthdays from the 1860s! It made me want to go to England and Ireland and trace my family history some more. I wonder if I’m related to anyone famous…
So that is my week in review. Like I said, overall, it was another great week. Now I’m off to the kitchen to whip up some goodies…I’ve been in the baking mood all day and I think it’s time I address it. 😉
I hope you’re having a great Thursday!
Questions for the day:
What was your favorite book in high school? Did you like your English classes?
Are you fascinated with a certain event or time in history?
How do you get bad images out of your mind?
What’s your family heritage? (I’m English, Irish, German, and Dutch.)
Are you related to anyone “famous”?
Liv Lives Life 
That mythology class sounds like so much fun to teach! We didn’t have any electives like that when I was in high school (just your basic Home Ec/Vo-Ag/Shop) but now they are introducing a few for next year. Color me jealous. Learning about mythology is awesome. You could even show them one of the Percy Jackson movies for a fun day 🙂
Mice and Men was a great read. Still haven’t read The Great Gatsby yet, because I’m just worried that it will be depressing…?
That Titanic exhibit sounds so neat! What a great idea with getting the tickets and surviving/not surviving. Kind of like the Holocaust Museum that I went to (except my school was deemed “too young” to participate. Grrr…).
Oh gosh. So sorry you had to see that deer get hit. I hit a groundhog once and it didn’t die right away 😦 I circled back and it was gone… In my mind I decided that it crawled back to its family, got all fixed up, and is now scampering through the woods somewhere! 🙂
Favorite book from High School- The Count of Monte Cristo!!
We didn’t have too many electives like it, either. I took creative writing, which was a lot of fun, but there were no elective lit classes. Good idea; there are so many fun things I could do.
I thought the Great Gatsby was an incredible book. It was probably the most beautifully written book I’ve ever read, but a bit sad. I wouldn’t call it depressing though. Maybe you should give it a try!
Yeah, it was like the Holocaust museum! That is really too bad you weren’t able to see it, but I guess I understand. It was pretty difficult to walk through some parts, and I just went last year.
Aw, I like that groundhog story. I’m just hoping the deer was out of pain quickly.
I’ve never read that, but it’s definitely on my reading bucket list!
The mythology and lit classes sound awesome! I loved my high school English classes, particularly when we got to read books that were somewhat outside the realm of normal high school reading curricula. Towards the end of my senior year, we did a unit on dystopic novels (Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale, and others of that genre), and despite my generally upbeat mood, I looooooooved that unit. I bet your students will love your class!
Genealogy is also fascinating stuff. I’m Welsh, Irish, and German, and I’m fascinated by the idea of finding out who my ancestors were, where they came from, and what their stories were. It’s awesome that your grandma was able to lend such insight into your family history!
I always loved it, too, when the teachers didn’t always stick to the canonical texts. I definitely plan to branch out a bit. My coordinating teacher has the students reading “Secret Life of Bees”, which I think is so awesome! Aw, thanks, I hope so!
We share a lot of the same background! It really would be so interesting and fun to try and trace my ancestors. Yes, it was very nice to hear it from her point of view! 🙂
So many things I want to comment on!
That’s so cool that you’ll be teaching mythology! I took that course in college and loved every minute of it. And you’ve got some pretty good reads in there too! Death of a Salesman = ❤
The Titanic exhibit sounds like so much fun, and I love how they gave you a little ID card with an actual passenger's name on it and let you see if they survived or not by the end. Shame about your pseudo husband though 😦
And the deer. Omigoodness. I once saw something like that as well, and it's never an easy thing to shake off. Disney would definitely help though… I'd probably drown myself in some of my favorite movies, like The Lion King, Aladdin, Lady and the Tramp, and Beauty and the Beast.
I’ve actually never taken a mythology course, but I’m really looking forward to reading these things…and teaching it! 🙂 I looove Death of a Salesman, too.
It really was very cool. I know, poor “husband.” 😛
Ugh, I’m still struggling. But yes, Disney always helps. It’s good to go back to things that remind me of the innocence of childhood. Lion King and Beauty and the Beast are definitely two of my favorites, but I think the best is Pocahontas! 🙂
My mum is dutch and dad is Australian but has links back to Irish/Italian heritage 🙂
That cider tasting looked like it was delicious. I love the idea of raspberry cider 🙂
I honestly can’t remember my favourite high school book that was actually prescribed reading but I do remember reading ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ in high school and really liking it.
Oh cool! There’s lots of good family history there, I’m sure!
It was! And yes, that was very different, but in a good way. 😉
I’ve never heard of “Looking for Alibrandi”…I’ll have to check it out!
That English class sounds so exciting! I never got to read anything that cool in HS, your students are lucky. Hs is when I first read Atlas Shrugged which I loved and also where I first discovered Jane Austen who I still love to this day 🙂
That cider tasting also looks amazing, I love hard cider and have never had some of those flavors before ❤
I think that just in the last few years, HS teachers have been able to branch out a bit more, which thankfully makes things more interesting. But yeah, I never got to read those sorts of things, either! I loooove Jane Austen’s books, too. 🙂
I do too, and I’d never tried those flavors either. Definitely something to keep an eye out for!
I remember reading Death of a Salesman in high school.
Right now I’m listening to a podcast about American slavery. It’s so interesting, and yet at the same time I’m flabbergasted that it actually happened.
That’s my general attitude toward slavery, too. When you really get deep into the details of it, it is just mind boggling that it did happen – or was even *able* to happen.
That date looks ammaaaazing. I love figuring out a fun cheap date night. And I’m sorry about the deer- always horrible to watch stuff like that 😦
Dan actually did all the planning, so it was even more fun for me to just sit back and enjoy it! 😉 And yeah, it really, really is.
Wow! That’s cool you get to read the bible for a class! haha that’s pretty cool 🙂
YAY for fun & cheap date nights!
I know! It will be interesting to see the different viewpoints on it! 🙂