Money well spent...

Guess who's spending Christmas break in Australia?

THIS GIRL!

Details will be coming soon...!

Mavaega and the Frisbee

Today was a fantastic day. Absolutely fantastic! I have nothing bad to say besides the fact that I wish I wasn’t hungry 24/7.

·         School was great! Everyone was well behaved which was such a change from last week. We read about farmers during the Great Depression and then we talked about foods that farmers grew during that time which we then connected to the foods that they grow here on island. I assigned them their first big project: a group skit where they will bring (within their group) a farming family during the Great Depression to life! They all seem to be excited about it.

·         I had found baby carrots at the grocery store on Friday. My lunch was so much more exciting!

·         It was a super/awful/terrible/I need a pool HOT kind of day and on our walk home from school, a school bus pulled over and picked us up! THANK YOU AMSAM!

·         3 packages came for me in the mail. Hurray for fun and exciting goodies!

·         Mavaega, Kolio (other neighbor boy) and I read books about sharks and snakes. We then threw a Frisbee and not only did we manage to get it stuck on the top of my house, but we also got it stuck in a lime tree, and in a breadfruit tree. Trying to get it down from all those places was quite a challenge. While trying to knock it out of the breadfruit tree, we also managed to get a 5 foot long wooden pole and a soccer ball also stuck in the tree. OKA! (oh my goodness.)

·         Abby and I went for a run and it was fabulous!

·         I ate my weight in food (after a cold, refreshing shower of course): leftover rice/chicken/veggies, an orange, two slices of peanut butter toast, and a small bag of m&m’s…and about two Nalgenes of water. I’m tellin’ ya people, I’m becoming a Samoan with all this eating!

·         I caught up on Facebook and my email and then stumbled across this amazing video that was taken just a few days before I arrived on island. Troy Polamalu from the Pittsburgh Steelers hosted a football camp for the entire island. He also donated new cleats and jerseys to all the teams. I'll also brag a little and say that he stood right outside my house because my landlords helped organize the camp. YEP! Small island. As I may have said before, I could care less about NFL. If someone asked me who won the Superbowl two years ago, I couldn’t tell you. I just don’t get it. But being on this island, and being around hundreds of kids and people that are so passionate about the sport, I can’t help but like it…a little bit. Anyways, watch this video! I recognize many of the Leone Lions and a few of my students are even in it!:

Troy Polamalu visits AmSam

·         As I sit here typing this, Mavaega has just called my name for the sixth time. He has been drawing me pictures at his house and then running over to my house and giving them to me. The first one got me all choked up because after our day of reading and playing yesterday, I think our relationship has changed in so many ways. Not only is he my BFF but he has become a little brother to me. I just love him so much! And he’s quite the drawer – lots of pictures of me running, throwing a Frisbee, and giving him hugs. We give each other opo’s a lot (hugs!).

·         And now it is time for bed.

Goodnight!

Not a fun start to my week...but a fun end!

Have you ever had one of those days where you just want to lay down, curl up in a ball, and cry your heart out? The kind of day where everything made you angry or upset and you just couldn’t take it anymore?

Of course you have and it’s (perfectly) normal. I’ll up and admit that I experienced one of those days…in fact, I experienced three in a row. Last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were literally and utterly awful. I am an overly enthusiastic person on a normal day. I try to always be extremely happy and positive in whatever I do. Keeping a smile on my face 99% of the day is important to me. Trying to be that person when 100+ high schoolers are misbehaving, talking back, yelling, not doing their work, and talking constantly is physically, mentally, and emotionally impossible.

Tuesday and Wednesday were about the same – lots of chatting, hitting (they just love to do this-one girl slapped another guy and made him bleed. I kicked her out of my class and locked the door.), and eye rolling. I always start the day (except for Wednesday) and end the day with a mainstream class and both of my mainstream classes are rough. In once class, they all just seem to sit and stare at me. I have to repeat directions at least five times, even when I’m simply asking them to take out their notebooks. It’s not that they don’t understand me, they just take forever to do anything. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m walking around clapping my hands and saying, “Let’s go, let’s go, zip the lips, get out your notebook”…etc, etc.  When I first started saying “let’s go” I had a few people ask me where we were going. I laughed on the inside.

Thursday was the killer day. I had a great lesson planned and as I was walking to school, I gave myself a pep talk to just get through the day because Friday would be that much closer. We are doing a unit on the Great Depression right now and after they took their vocab quiz, I had printed out some photos of the Migrant Mother, bankers, men standing in line to apply for jobs, etc. I was going to put everyone in groups, hand out the photos, have them talk about what they thought was going on, and then have them present to the class. After all this, I would read them the actual caption of the picture to let them know how close they were to guessing.  My first two periods were great – they seemed to enjoy the lesson and they were somewhat quiet and attentive. After that, my day went from “okay” to “seriously?” I’m pretty sure 80% of the kids cheated on their vocab quiz (darn them and their capability to speak another language!). Even though I tell them to be quiet, a few stifle out some words or laughs, and I bet you anything that they are giving each other the answers! From now on, if anyone talks during a quiz, I’m ripping it up in front of them and giving them a 0. Take that!

The heartbreaking moment (or 50 minutes) of the day came when my best class (meaning they always listen, do their work, and pay attention) lost it. I could barely even hear myself say the directions of the lesson because they were talking and laughing so loud. Finally I said, alright, if you keep talking, you’re staying an extra minute after the bell. Obviously they didn’t hear me, so I kept going. I got up to four when one girl finally went, “AUA LE PISA!” (stop the noise) I explained to them that they would be staying four minutes after, and for some reason that meant nothing to them so they kept talking. I asked, do you want one more minute and one of my sweetest kids looked me in the eyes and went, “Yep, give us one more.” UGH. Just thinking about it now gets me all choked up. I responded with, “Alright, fine. For the last 15 minutes of class, you can sit in silence. Turn your face forward, don’t lay your head on your desks, and be quiet. One voice and you’re going to the office.” So, they sat for 15 whole minutes. The bell rang. They sat for four more. I explained to them that their attitude would not be acceptable and that I did not appreciate the way they were treating me. WHY is it SO HARD to be mean? As I did so, some of the kids had bug eyes – it’s like they were seeing a whole other side of me. When their four minutes were up, several of them apologized, and one kid came up to me and said sorry and gave me a fist bump (that made me smile a little). What a day, what a day. When 3:00 finally rolled around, I sat at my desk, turned on my music, and tried everything I could possibly do not to burst into tears. I succeeded – I refuse to let them win!

The next day, one of the kids in the class came up to my desk with a serious look on his face. "Miss, are you still mad?" "No George, I'm not. I just don't want to be treated that way and it's not gonna happen again, right?" He's a really good kid and I don't think he was being disruptive. I feel bad for the kids that actually come to class to learn.

[I must pause this blog post. Mavaega is calling my name and giving me code symbols to come outside and play with him. BRB!]

Ok, back! I just spent the last hour and a half reading an I SPY book with Mavaega. We taught each other new words in our languages. I taught him that “cap” and “hat” mean the same thing, as well as “pail” and “bucket.” We talked about snowmen, we sounded out words, and when he read the word "sweet" on a page full of candy pictures and I asked him what that meant, he responded, "That means niiiice." Hahaha. He taught me how to say sunglasses, five cents, and “Do not touch the boy's ear.” in Samoan. We clearly had some fun conversations. He will be turning 8 in November and his reading skills are excellent for a third grader! Before I SPY we played with some punch balloons that my Mom had sent me. Fun! Abby and I also made the most amazing/delicious/to-die-for lime bars – how sweet it is to live by a lime tree!

Now that I’m in such a happy mood, I don’t really feel like talking about the negativity of last week. It’s over and done with, right?! Needless to say, Friday ended up being an amazing day. My classes listened, they were kind, and we had a fun time. Hurray! Abby and I grocery shopped on Friday night, made blueberry almond pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner, had some cheap New Zealand wine, and went to bed early. On Saturday, I went into “town” (meaning I got on an ‘aiga bus, sat on the bus and soaked in the ocean as we cruised along the coast for an hour). Yep, it takes just about an hour to get from our house to the post office. I mailed some letters – the week before last I had all my kids write letters to soldiers. They loved it! We talked about what things to include in a letter and how if you wanted to be a pen pal with someone, what would you ask or say. 3 of them brought in addresses of family members that were serving and I sent the rest of the letters to three others that were based in Afghanistan. After getting home, Abby and I eventually wandered down to Sliding Rock again and explored even farther along the water. We found some awesome, crystal clear tide pools…did a little snorkeling and a little jumping into the pools. We even saw some ocean creatures farther out! Not quite sure if it was a dolphin(s) or a whale, but we definitely saw spray from a blowhole and something dark moving in the water. Our mom’s are mailing us binoculars – whale season is just around the corner!

Sunday is coming to a close. I’ve got some rice cookin’ on the stove for a chicken/rice/veggie dish, and I’m sure I’ll end all that deliciousness with another lime bar. Tomorrow is a NEW day and let’s hope that I get through it with a smile.

Much alofa!



Abby on the left, dried up (?) lava on the right!

A new view of the Sliding Rock coast. Do you now understand why I like to come here so much?

Tide pool! This one was too shallow to swim in.

I had just jumped off the rocks on the right. It was pretty deep in this pool. We snorkeled a little, saw some really bright blue fish (I failed at taking a good picture of them), and swam around enjoying the peace and quiet.

Mavaega playing with the punch balloon. He just loved it!

My BFF and I.

We spent a long time on that hammock. I SPY is fun!

I have more pictures I want to load, but the internet is not being very nice. Guess I'll try again tomorrow! Manuia le Monday!

And then there were three...pictures!

Our FEMA friends had another party for us last weekend. As you can see, they fed us lots of delicious dishes! They have now left AmSam - one to Australia and the other two back to the USA. They will be missed!

At our last football game against Faga'itua HS, Leone was "away," meaning we faced the ocean and not the mountains (from the stands).

Baby bananas (total omg-this-is-the-best-banana-of-my-life moment when you eat them!)

Labor Day Adventures

After a fabulous Friday and Saturday, you would think that my Sunday might be low key considering Sunday is the day of rest (and the day of gorging on food). It was for the most part. I did a little resting and I ate a lot of food, but let's just start at the beginning.

On Saturday night, one of my vice principals invited me back to the CCCAS, which is the Congregational Christan Church of American Samoa in Leone. It was also the very first church on island...you can read more about it and see pictures of what the chapel looks like on their website: CCCAS Leone  I had visited this church once before and had seen many of my fellow teachers and students. This past Sunday was the celebration of the 181st anniversary of CCCAS so eight other CCC churches from the west side came to the service in Leone. The chapel was packed - so many Samoans all jammed into one place. It was very hot, and I got a seat that literally touched the back of the church. All in all, it was 2 beautiful hours of Samoan and beautiful singing. I saw lots of my students and it warmed my heart to see their eyes light up when they saw me at their church.

Following church, I was invited to a to'onai (sunday lunch) by a woman who works for the Department of Education. It was so interesting to eat lunch in a traditional Samoan house.  The adults and guests always eat first and are served by the children. This was a bit awkward for me as one of my students was putting food on my plate. After we finished, we sat outside with some coffee, and the kids got to eat. Following the coffee and digestion of all the Samoan food, Tui (the DOE woman) drove me all along the west coast of the island out to the village of Amanave. The views were breathtaking and also unsettling in some spots. Many villages on the west coast were ripped apart by the tsunami in 2009. Many FEMA tents still stand and it was haunting to see houses and churches literally ripped apart. By the time I got back to my house, it was 1:00 and I had left at 8:45. I had a great day!

Having Monday off from school was also nice. At this point in the school year, I am still so excited for each day with my kids, but I was happy to have a day off during the week to explore. Abby and I were up bright and early for a long run. We had to HALU a few times, but thankfully no dogs tried to attack us. Following that, our friend Khoa came over and from there we went to a local park in the village of Vailoa. The walk took us about half an hour and once we got there, we came across a massive cricket tournament. I know nothing about cricket, but it was entertaining to watch. We found a spot on the field where we could throw a frisbee and within 15 minutes, we were surrounded by kids that all wanted to play with us. The frisbee (thanks Kristine!) ended up being a huge hit. It was an absolute blast and the kids were adorable. Most of them were young, probably between the ages of 5 and 10. They could barely speak English so we spoke the little bit of Samoan that we did know. Once we told them our names, all they said was Quinn Quinn Quinn! Abby Abby Abby! Khoa Khoa Khoa! It was so precious.

Today happened to be hot. The kind of hot where you just want to lay down under a ceiling fan. There was no breeze and the sun was extreme. After about an hour and a half, we told the kids that we were going to go swimming and from there, they invited us to their private beach! We asked permission from the owners of the land, and within 10 minutes, Khoa, Abby, and I were standing on a white sand beach surrounded by palm trees and a whole bunch of kids. We splashed around and got hit by the big galu (nngaahloo - wave). The current was super strong and you had to use all your might to stand up. How these little 5 and 6 year olds could do it with no problem was amazing to me. There were also lots of lava rocks and they were extremely slippery, to the point where you could slide down them...Abby and I tried to walk on them and we could barely stand up. Even crawling was difficult because they were so slippery. The kids walked on them like it was no big deal. Samoans are so cool!

After lots of sun (almost too much - it was scorching every part of us) we headed home for a much needed shower. I had sand just about everywhere on me. Having sand in your pants is no fun. Later on, I played badmitten (how do you spell it?) with Mavaega for a long time. Now the temperature is finally cooling down and I just finished a big bowl of brown rice, chicken, and teriyaki veggies. Ahhh. Now on to lesson planning for the week.

Malo!

P.S. I slept awful last night - couldn't fall asleep. When I finally did fall asleep, I remember waking up for about 3-5 seconds and I thought to myself, "Is my bed shaking right now?" before falling asleep again. Turns out it was really shaking! An earthquake hit around Tonga sometime after 10:00 last night and we felt it here in AmSam. It was a 6. something. Thankfully there was no tsunami warning. Our house is far enough from the water and it is also on a hill...I am also thankful for that.

So many little kiddos! Abby, Khoa, or I would throw the frisbee up really high in the air and all the kids would go running to catch it...so funny!

The only name I remember out of this bunch is Moi - the girl in the pink shorts. The two boys are clearly twins and I could not get enough of them. They were adorable in every way and they kept asking Abby and I questions in Samoan. We would just respond by saying "how are you" in Samoan. It made us laugh and they just gave us puzzled faces. Ha!

Another Moi and the twins. Once I brought out my camera all everyone wanted to do was take a picture and then look at it! Pictures are FUN!

The same boys again, two minutes later. Samoan pile up!

These two joined us right before we went swimming. They are brothers and obviously BFF's. That's another great thing about this culture...your brothers and sisters are your best friends. The older boy is a sophomore at Leone HS. He looks serious in this picture but he usually had a smile on his face.

Siaosi (the Samoan name for George) loved playing with the frisbee!

A few hours at a private beach surrounded by adorable kids? Perfect way to spend any afternoon. The funny thing is, this isn't even all the kids...there were still many more who hadn't gotten in the water yet.

Little, wet, cute Samoans

Two new friends of mine who loved having their pictures taken.

This is Sammy and her brother Vai. Their family owns the beach. Sammy is one of Abby's sophomore students.

Photos on a Sunday

Talofa lava and Manuia! I hope you enjoyed your weekend and if you have tomorrow off of work or school, enjoy that too! I have had an incredible weekend so far (no weekend has disappointed me yet) but it wouldn't be complete without a new blog post - this time of pictures. I'd like to show you a little bit of what going to school for me is like, and who I get to see while I'm there. Get excited!

This is the road I walk along to get to school.

This is the same road only looking the other way - my walk home.

Tropical rainbow = pretty darn beautiful.

Some of the boys in my 2nd period. The boy on the right is wearing his JROTC uniform. JROTC is HUGE here and a lot of kids - girls too! are involved in it. They wear their uniforms on Thursdays...and they look so handsome and beautiful!

The same boys 2 minutes later - these guys love to look at the world map my mom sent me.  

5th period - what a fun bunch they are.

I dressed up like the kids this past Friday. Teachers didn't recognize me - they thought I was a student. Kids commented, "Nice uniform, Miss!" My green sunnies are also a huge hit. "Where did you get those, Miss? Can I have them?" - heard that about 50 million times.

1st Period: "Miss, you're so white!" - I laughed out loud. You'll notice the guitar - several students bring their guitars to school every day. I love when they sing and play, which happens often! Also, some of the kids don't have uniforms on because Friday was our first Pep Rally. The juniors had to wear green shirts.

The view from my room in between classes. So much green and yellow!

Some seniors and one of my students (in the sunglasses) stopped by to say hi...and to ask if they could have my sunglasses. Whenever they pose like gangsters, I call them Fia Gangsters. Fia means "wannabe". It makes them laugh.

Some of my 2nd period writing in their journals. I clearly did not notice the cell phone as I was taking this.

Two of my adoooooorable kids from 3rd period. All of my kids are adorable. So so so cute. This is my shirt that the art teacher made for me - he even spray painted my name on it! I'm a junior class advisor so I get to hang out with my kids all the time. Hooray!

More 3rd period. They make me laugh so hard!

No pep rally would be complete without boys dressing up like girls. The two on the left and the one on the right are my students. You'll also notice the sock/slipper look.

The junior class banner. All the classes compete in many different things including banners! The boy with the pink backpack is one of mine and he is an incredible artist. Many others in this pic are my kids too - including our junior class president in the barely there outfit.

Some of the junior class at the pep rally. GO LIONS!

The Pep Rally was a major event. Barely any of my kids were in class on Friday because they were prepping for it. All the classes competed with banners, Mr. and Miss, and cheers that lasted 6 minutes long - I got some great videos of those...but the darn internet is too slow for me to upload them. It was a fantastic way to end the week. I even got to dance in front of everyone again - only this time with two of my students - so so fun! We were rallying for the sports, but mainly for the football team. We played the undefeated school Faga'itua on Saturday and ended up losing 23-14. We scored two touchdowns in the first quarter and it was so exciting! 2 Leone kids got taken to the hospital though...sad day.

I'll leave you with that for now. Tomorrow I will be doing some hiking on my day off of school and I will come back to the blog with more adventures and pictures of the beautiful island that I'm calling my home away from home.

AmSam Randoms!

AmSam is the place to go if you are looking for the most random/weird/crazy things to see or discover. Every day, heck, every hour, something new happens that completely blows me away. Some things make me laugh and some things make me sad. That’s life though, right? Not everything can make you smile. Let’s do some bullet points (Cousin Clare and I share a love for them!)

·         When I was in NZ, it was common for Kiwis to wear (what they call) jandals aka flip flops with socks. It must be a Pacific Islander thing – they do it here too, only 1) Samoans call flip flops slippers and 2) with all the heat and rain, what’s the point of wearing socks? It’s the funniest when women do it. A woman at our school usually comes with a beautiful puletasi on and then the slipper/sock look. Funny.

·         For some reason, kids here share everything. In the Samoan culture, they usually say “what’s mine is yours.” They love to swap cell phones. I’ll often have random kids knocking on my door during class, and when I ask them what they need, they ask if they can talk to “so and so” to get their cell phone. I’ve also got the kids that run out of minutes on their phones so they swap SIM cards to use each other’s minutes. Random.

·         We got our pictures taken for our ID’s last week and it was pretty exciting. No one has their own ID anymore though…they swap with each other, and if they have a boyfriend or girlfriend, they put each other’s ID’s on their backpacks. They also love to look at my ID. “Can I look at your ID, Miss? Oooh so pretty.” Kids these days.

·         My kids bring the weirdest stuff to class…everything from palm fronds to coconuts to extra long screwdrivers to huge seeds.  They just like to display the stuff on their desk. I don’t really get it.

·         Remember slap bracelets? They were popular in like what, 6^th grade? They’re a HUGE hit here (we’re on Island time here, folks, we’re waaaay behind with this fad) – everyone is wearing them. It cracks me up to see boys walking around with “Rockstar” or “Girls Rock” or “Love” slapped across their wrists.

Now for a few serious notes about my students:

·         I met a freshman the other day and she told Abby and I that she only has one friend at Leone HS. We asked her why, and she said that all the other girls are “backstabbers”.  Apparently when she was in elementary school (remember it goes through 8^th grade), the other girls thought that she liked all their boyfriends (the girl told us she didn’t) so no one liked her. She then went on to tell us that she didn’t want any other friends because she only wants to be friends with people she really trusts. Almost every single girl here uses the word “backstabber” when they talk about other girls. Girls literally get in fights with each other. Talk about high school drama.

·         The boys on the other hand take it a bit farther. If someone talks bad about their family, it instantly turns in to a fight. Thankfully I have yet to witness a fight, but two of my sweetest boys have come to class with sunglasses on. When I ask them to take them off, they quietly ask me if they can keep them on (and then they show me their black eyes). This hits me in the gut and breaks my heart all at once. Sad.

·         During the second week of school, we played English Bingo in my class. I used it as an assessment activity so I had categories like vocab, sentence structure, grammar, etc. I had my students draw a bingo board on a piece of paper and then up on the chalkboard, I had written out 25 words (one word for each box) for them to write in all the boxes. I explained to them that each word had to be written in one of the boxes on their bingo boards. They all just sat there and stared at me. “What do you want us to do, Miss?” I had to explain it to each of my classes 10+ times as well as almost to every single student. They literally had no idea what to do. It was a very difficult task for them and I’m still not sure why. By the time we played Bingo, class was pretty much over!

·         When the kids are taking tests or I have them read out of our textbook, a lot of them cannot read silently because they either don’t know how or they won’t understand. When I first noticed voices during quiet reading, I went to raise my voice a bit to get them to be quiet, and then I realized that they were reading out loud to themselves. It’s kind of really adorable/cute/I just want to have them read me a story!

Now for some bullet points about other random things:

·         Let’s talk about coconuts. I only thought there was one kind. I was so wrong. There are about a bazillion different kinds of coconuts here…we’ve got yellow ones, green ones, brown ones, furry ones, baby ones, huge ones. The list goes on and on. There are coconut trees everywhere. I’ve witnessed two falling out of trees and WHEEEEWIE it’s like a meteor crashing into Earth. You can almost feel the thud when they hit the ground (not really…). It’s also really loud. Today, I was following Mavaega (my 8 year old BFF) around the front yard as he picked up “rubbish” aka leaves, and I was pointing to all the different coconuts and asking which ones you can eat/drink from. 20 minutes later, he’s standing in front of the dining room window with a husked(?) coconut in hand. I walk outside and he hands it to me. I then drank from a coconut. How sweet (haha pun) is that?! It was absolutely delicious (and I’m not a big coconut fan). Later on, he had his older brother crack it open for me and I ate the meat out of it. Turns out it was a “baby” coconut, which are called Niu here, and that’s why it was so tasty. I’ve got a student named Niu. I probably shouldn’t tell him that I like the taste of Niu, should I? Jokes! (That’s what kids say here when they say something funny.)

·         Samoans have an extremely touchy culture. Americans tend to keep our distance, but in AmSam, they’ve always got a hand on each other. I think it’s so cute when boys will lay their heads down on the desk (hey! No sleeping!) and put their arms on the back of the boy in front of them.  They also enjoy walking around with their arms around each other. Adoooooorable. At home teachers get sued for laying a finger on their students, but here, it is perfectly acceptable for me to pat their backs  or literally push them out of my classroom (kids always want to come to my class instead of their Samoan teacher’s class). I like this.

Love.

·         We’ve got our first Leone HS staff party this Saturday. I fulfilled my secretary duties by taking notes at our meeting on Tuesday. OH WAIT. 99.9% of the meeting was in Samoan. I just sat there with bug eyes, staring around the room. I might as well have just been a fly on the wall. Once I finally managed to get the translation in English I was still overwhelmed because then everybody was staring at me. Hey! Not my fault you made the palagi girl the secretary! Anyways, we created the menu for our party. 99.5% of it is meat. We’re having 2 pigs, cases of chicken, boxes of sausage, and turkey tails (what the heck is a turkey tail?!) as well as some traditional Samoan dishes. I told the other people at the meeting that Amber, Abby, and I would bring dessert. Everybody laughed at me! I asked why they were laughing, and they didn’t really say why. I bet you 5 million bucks that our cakes will be gone within 20 minutes. Samoans these days.

Wheeeeewie was that enough of an update for ya? I’ll be nice and include some recent pictures. Malo!

 Hooray - new lavalava!

 The JV volleyball game against Fa'asao Marist HS. It was a very easy win for us. Watching the volleyball games is my new favorite school related activity. I never really thought or cared about volleyball until I came here...now I go to all their home games as well as any games that are nearby!

 Look how cute/tiny/precious they are!!

 They wanted to take a picture with me. I'm not really sure why the girl took it at such an awkward angle, but whatever, I was honored!

Fia gangsters at the Vball game. The boy on the left is in one of my classes and he's a total sweetheart. If you look closely, please notice his rhinestone studded heart necklace.

This is my 6th period. 2 weeks ago I literally could not stand anyone in this class. Now, I love them all to pieces. Look how focused they are. Woo hoo!

Oh and P.S. I have about a bazillion different nicknames here...all of which are from students that aren't mine. I've got a girl that calls me Party Girl ("Heyyyyy Party guuuuuuuuuurl") and a boy that calls me Miss America. I've never talked to this kid before, but he's on the Varsity Vball team and now whenever he sees me he goes "Hi Miss America! Bye Miss America" and then he runs away. Makes me laugh. I do have a couple students that say goofy things to me. One likes to tell me he loves me all the time and the other calls me beautiful. I probably shouldn't let this happen, but the way they say it is just so funny! Can't help it.

BYE!