Yep, I'm Still Alive

I’m feeling a bit sheepish that I haven’t written in such a long time.  I got an email from an old friend the other day who mentioned how much she enjoyed reading my blog and I realized it’s been ages since I’ve written anything.  I guess life in England has become so familiar that I forget just how cool it is that I live here.  Life just becomes life when you get up and go to work every day.  The same thing happened to me on my mission.  Everything was so exciting and adventurous and new, but by the end, it was just life.  I try to remember everyday that this experience will end someday and that I need to take advantage of it while I can.  It still is pretty cool that I’ve lived here for 3 years now.  I can hardly believe that it’s been so long.  I love that I’m going to have so many amazing stories to tell about this grand adventure.  I remember growing up hearing my mom’s stories about her semester abroad and wanting to have stories like that of my own.  Hopefully I’ll find people who want to hear mine. 

I’m on holiday next week and am looking forward to a few days of travel.  I promise to put pictures up as soon as I get some.  It will be nice to have some time off.  I’m loving my job and I feel like I’m getting the hang of it, but it’s much harder work than teaching in America.  I teach 13 different groups of girls and 7 different subjects.  It makes for a bit of a chicken-with-its-head-cut-off existence sometimes.  One day I went to class and wondered why the desks had been rearranged.  It wasn’t until some of the students started wondering in that I realized that I had gone to the totally wrong classroom.  I enjoy the variety, though, and it makes me wonder how I ever taught the same thing 7 times a day.  Part of me is looking forward to that again, but I guess the grass is always greener.  What I’d really love is to teach at a high school part-time doing their AP classes and then teach a few classes at a junior college or something like that.

My students are really great and as always, that’s the part of the job I like the most.  We have a really good time together and they think I’m pretty funny.  I’m such a sucker for people who think I’m funny.  I think they also like that I’m American.  They’re pretty cute.  Kids are the same everywhere and I love feeling like I’m making a difference in their lives and leaving a lasting legacy.  I also love that someday they’ll tell stories about the year they had an American teacher who couldn’t pronounce yogurt right. 

I’m going to try to start keeping track of the funny things they say and do for the book I’m going to write someday.  I should have been doing it all along, but I guess it’s better now than never.  In that spirit, here’s my first story. 

I was teaching my year 8 class (who are equivalent to 7^th graders in age) about the Tudors and the religion situation.  We were discussing Mary and whether or not she deserved her nickname of ‘Bloody Mary’ for burning all the Protestants.  The girls were curious as to why someone would do that so we discussed the importance of showing power and control by ruthlessly enforcing your policies.  One of my students, who is actually one of the more clever ones, raised her hand and asked, “The Queen doesn’t still do that, does she?”  I had to try not to laugh out loud at the thought of Old Lizzie burning heretics at the stake.  Classic.