" I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it I'm about to lose control and I think I like it!!"

Well here we are...it is already June 21st. The first day of summer and yet we are still in school. That is the hardest things for my brain to understand hahaha...I am ready to be done with Mexico. However, I think it has a been a great experience and I really love my kids. I will miss them dearly, but many of them already email me all the time so I will get to keep in touch with them:).

Figures.....
This past week we started our end of the year exams and they will continue until the end of this week and then I am FREEEEEEEE!!:) This past Wednesday, I started to have a TERRIBLE sore throat so I went to the doctor and once again I have a throat, nose, and ear infection. Now let me tell you that I love them;) Truly I love them...... I am starting to feel better and am hoping by the weekends end, I will be fully recovered. I did treat myself to the new Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds movie and lets just say I LOVED IT!!!!!!

I miss the rain down in Torreon....
It has been a strange past couple weeks in terms of the weather. We have been having dust storms and rain storms. It is kind of unusual but it nice to have a change. However, the thing that was not fun was just getting out of the shower to a PITCH BLACK room. I admit that I did scream because what else is there to do when you get out of the shower and all of a sudden the lights go out?! It was definitely an experience haha. I was trying to think of what I could use for light and I remembered that one of my students gave me this huge candle apple for teachers day so I lit it. So for the next couple of hours, I sat in my HOT DARK room and finally I was tired enough to sleep. Well a couple hours later all of my lights and fans turned on and it freaked the crap out of me hahahaha. I woke up in a daze and stumbled around my room trying to shut the lights off hahaha.The other funny site in terms of the weather was when I went to the movie on Friday. The weather looked pretty iffy but hey whatever, I needed to see the new SB movie! Well during the movie, we could hear the rain. It poured and poured. Now in Torreon, they aren't prepared for such rainfall in a small amount of time so when we got out of the movie, the streets were literally flooded!! It was an adventure. Then when we finally "swam" home, we decided we were hungry and some of us went out in the rivers looking for a good chinese restaurant. It was definitely quite the experience and I had some awesome chinese that was under 4 bucks!!! I laughed quite a bit!!
It will be a good rest of the year. My birthday is on Wed and my friends have something fun planned so that will be fun. We also took a trip last weekend to a really tiny town to have a bachelorette party for out friend megan who is getting married. It was a really fun and relaxing weekend! I may not have time to blog from now until I leave on July 1st so I want to thank all of you for keeping up with me and caring about my life!!! I will keep you posted when I get home and I hope to see you soon!!

These are some things that I will miss about Mexico:

• cheap movies featuring comfy lazy boy leather chairs and chair-side service!
• spanglish
• my spoiled rich children
• going to random parties with students and other friends
• general hospitality and kindness
• chamoy
• cheap veggies and fruit
• spanish music...I love it
• having people stare at you in awe
• random people saying "hello" to you haha
• my closest pals..miss you muchisimo!
• dancing
• gorditas and sopes
• farolitos
• traveling for cheap
  

These are some things I can't wait for in America;):

• my family
• my peeps
• air conditioning!!!!
  
• LIVING ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Having my own room and things
  
• SHOPPING
• tv...anything in English
• movies when they come out and not waiting until they reach mexico
• subway
• driving....especially blaring my music with the windows down
• rain and various seasons
• american tacos and food made by my rents:)
• my cat and dog
• affordable toiletries, school supplies..etc.
• pizza and blockbuster
• riding my bike...i miss this A LOT!

Random but I tried to send this box back to the states and it is impossible so here I am walking down the street with this box:)....not embarrassing at all!!!

"Oh! We're having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising, I certainly can can-can"

I'm not sure if I even remember how to blog anymore. Little did I know that blogging would become harder and harder to accomplish. Just know it wasn't my intent to not share my life with you all!! So...I will attempt to update you on my life since February. I will keep it short and to the point as much as I can because I know there have been quite a few of you who have told me that I am long winded:).

Swine Flu :S
Well as many of you know the Swine Flu hit Mexico, however there aren't any cases where I am. It was such a weird thing to see people wearing masks everywhere we went. It was sort of a unsettling feeling. The president of Mexico closed school for an extra two weeks which was a hate/love event. I enjoyed not going to school and having some extra time to do whatever. However, NOTHING was open during this time. Movie theaters, malls, pools, etc. were closed which made things a little frustrating! To top it off, it is becoming pretty darn hot!! It's still 100 or plus sometimes at 11 or 12 at night. It seems pretty crazy to me because I compare it to home and think we are lucky that it's a dry hot heat. The combination of heat and closed places, some of us pooled our money and bought a kiddie pool; that's right a kiddie pool. It was pretty funny when we all climbed in to cool off and sat all crossed legged in a pool that maybe was a foot deep. The things we do to beat the heat! It was one of the best investments that I have made so far in Mexico.I got the job!
Well....since I am only here until July 1st, I have had to try to find a job for next year. Talk about a pain the butt! There is soooo much paperwork and it felt like I was in college again writing reflection papers. Since I am out of the country, it makes getting that perfect job even more difficult. Many nights I would stay up late working on applications and searching. I applied for a ton of jobs. One of the places that I heard from first was a bilingual school in Worthington, MN. They were interested because it is like what I am doing now in Mexico. They were kind enough to wait two weeks to interview me until I got back from spring break. When I got back, they called me. The interview went very well and they called me the next day to offer me the job. I was really excited and pumped but I asked them to call me in two day for my decision. After a lot of thinking and consulting, I took the job. So next year I will be moving to Worthington and starting over. I will be teaching english to 5/6, 7/8 and graders. I am nervous and excited because I haven't had that grade level before. However, it will be a good experience. I will though miss those little kids:).

Spring Break
During Easter, we got 2 weeks and in that time I went all over Mexico. I saw Guanajuato, Mexico City, Morelia, and Guadalajara. I had a good time and it was fun to see and experience the things that I learned in my Spanish classes. In Meixco City, I saw the Aztec pyramids and the colorful boats in Xochimilco. Morelia was a lot of fun because it was sooooo peaceful and beautiful. I also loved the food and those of you who know me, know that I am pretty picky when it comes to food. Guadalajara was ok...my favorite part was the hotel. Man it was soooo nice and cheap. We slept in and ordered cheap room service. It sure beat the weird mosquito infested hostel that I stayed in for a week in Mexico City. Overall it was a pretty good time and I will put some links at the end of the blog so you can view some pictures. (http://picasaweb.google.com/home?tab=mq)Oh my god, look who's back again.....
I also went to a Backstreet boys concert. That is right and BSB concert...hahaha. It was funny to see a whole spanish speaking culture obesssed with those boys. We all sang along and remembered all the words haha...ooooo middle school:).

Puente de Torreon

We had a three day weekend this past weekend and instead of going anywhere, Emily and I decided that we need some R & R. It was a fun and busy weekend. We went all over the city and acted like we were tourists haha. It was fun and funny at the same time. I will try to make this post short because most all of you readers tell me that I am long winded so here are the basics of my weekend:).

Friday
Yay for pay day!! It always makes for a fun weekend when pay day falls the day before the weekend!! My vacation started out fun. I was invited to one of my student's house for lunch and it was tasty. We went to her grandmas house for lunch. I thought that there wouldn't be other people there but when I opened the door, there was a house full. Apparently every friday the entire family comes over for lunch. I was amongest all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. This house was AMAZING, just beautiful and fancy. I really couldn't get over how nice it was. After lunch we headed to the girl's house in Las Villas. Las Villas is like a gated community and man is it WEALTHY! I step out of their fancy surburban and go into their house and it was a wow moment. I just stood their marveling at all of their things. It definitely was too fancy for me but regardless it was NICE!! All of the artwork was done by the mom and she told me about her paintings and how long they took her to make. I was in awe by her talent and she just paints for fun. One of her stories cracked me up because it started out with "So my mom and I were traveling around Spain for a couple of months and decided to take this art class......" Yeah I travel around the world all the time taking art classes haha. The kids' rooms looked like they were out of the Pottery Barn for kids. Just awesome rooms. I didn't end up leaving until 10pm!!! It was quite the night haha.

Saturday
I slept in on Saturday and had a lazy morning. I did some laundry and washed dishes until I had a birthday party for one of my students at the movie theater. When Emily and I got to the theater, just picture 14 crazy 8 year old girls yelling MISS JENNA!! It was funny and I had to practically draw straws for who would sit by me haha. It was also comical because I decided to wear my contacts and I haven't worn them at school yet so they haven't seen them so everyone's first comment was "and your lentes, miss" haha. They don't miss a single thing. One thing Emily and I didn't expect was that the mom had rented the whole theater just for this party. We watched the movie Bolt in 3d by ourselves in this huge theater. There was a movie feast, there was popcorn, pop, pizza, nachos, hotdogs, etc. The kids kept asking Emily and I if we understood the movie because it was all in Spanish. It makes me laugh because daily they asked me questions in Spanish and I respond to them in English and it doens't occurr to them that I do ineed know some Spanish:). The girls were crazy and laughing and being normal 8 year old girls so by the end of the movie, both Emily and I were exhausted haha.
When we got home, we chilled for a bit and decided to go for a nice dinner to Italianis (one of our faves). It was a very nice time and when we got home, we were invited by some friends to go to a new dance club called Love. So Emily and I decided to give it a try. I want you to picture Emily and I showing up to this place in somewhat casual attire. Well we were definitely under dressed but no one seemed to mind. Normally you have to wait for hours to get into this place but since our friend's cousin was the owner we not only didn't have to wait, we got in for free haha. It was a pretty awesome place and we want to go there again. I met a lot of new people and they were sooo nice. Just very nice people and here we didn't know them very well and they invited us to their super bowl party. Most of the people here are very genuine and I find it very refreshing. We left the club a little early because we wanted to go to church the next day. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.

Sunday
Emily and I decided we would go to mass at the Cristo in the morning. The cristo is a huge staue at the top of a mountain and they have mass there every Sunday. It was a beautiful morning and it was definitely a good decison. During mass, there was a cat roaming around which just cracked me up. I knew most of the songs because at school we have mass once a month. Singing is my favorite part of church!! After church we walked around a bit and took some pics. When we were ready to leave we had to call a taxi and it turned out to be a lot of work. When the taxi finally showed up we decided to take advantage of it and we went to the statue of Torreon and the Eifle Tower statue. It was pretty humorous because a-we looked like tourists and b-we had a smilely cute old taxi man take our pictures haha. He was very pleasant. When we were done sight seeing, we got some Subway at the mall and walked around. Emily got a cute new dress. Our day started out at 11 and we didn't get home until 5:30 haha. We were invited to a super bowl party with our friends from the club but we decided we were too tired and that we would take advantage of the 2 for 1 meals at Ok Maguey. So we met Rocio and Lily there and had a fun time talking over dinner. When Emily and I got home, we were pooped out and fell asleep around 11 because of our packed day!! But it is ok because Monday we don't have school!!! Yay another day to sleep in and I love it!!! (View from the top of the Cristo) [In front of the Torreon statue:)] (Eifle tower, the taxi dude had some issues centering the picture haha)

There is a God!!....and his name is Tomas

Well I would have to say last weekend, I had one of the most up and down weekends I have ever had en mi vida. It all started out on a pleasant Sunday morning. Emily and I decided we would go grocery shopping and then go to a fresh fruit and fresh vegetable market called Abastos. Well, the day goes on without a hitch. We get into the taxi, he take us to H.E.B (where we get some American things like tator tots haha) and about 45 min later we are in line and I go to get out my wallet and wouldn't you know IT WASN'T there!!! At this moment, I felt like crying and throwing up haha. My life was in this wallet. Emily did do a good job of trying to call me down and made me realize that I still had most important things at home but still I was upset. So I figured that I some how left it in the taxi cab. How? I have no idea but nontheless it was lost and after talking to our principal, it was lost forever. So when we get home from our shopping I went to get the groceries out of the trunk of the cab and smacked my head on the door and had a long and huge bump across my forhead. So I am crying and laughing and Emily can hardly walk because she is laughing so hard. Just picture me sitting on the couch with a bag of ice cubes on my head trying to skype my mom. After talking to my mom, I had to call wellsfargo and cancel my cards and discuss my accounts. The lady I spoke to was extremely nice and it seemed like it would be a somewhat easy fix. Then as soon as I froze one of my accounts the doorbell rang and Emily was like WHO IS THAT?! we don't have time for this hahaha. So she runs out there, screams, and comes back in the house with.........MY WALLET. What are the odds!? Seriously. The taxi man remembered where we lived and was nice enough to come all the way back here. Everything inside was untouched. So meanwhile I am on the phone with the wellsfaro lady and I say well actually can you unfreeze my accounts?! because the taxi man just came back to our house with my wallet. She paused and said well I need to get my supervisor, in all of my years in costumer service this hasn't happened hahaha. I can't tell you how happy and grateful I was/am. I gave him 100 pesos for his act of kindness. All I can say is what a day and it just goes to show that there are nice people out in the world.

Holy hairballs January is speeding on by.....

Well, I just got done with the first full week of school since I got back from my nice trip home to the wintry wonderland. I really enjoyed my time at home and spending time with friends and family but it was nice to come back to the warm weather and back to my normal routine. My kids were very happy to see me when I got back to school. One of my 3rd graders instead of saying "Hi, Miss Jenna, I'm glad you are back," instead said, "Miss when can you come to my house?!" Those kids really crack me up. They are definitely not used to speaking English because it has been difficult getting them back into that routine!

Life is a little different now because Emily, Breanna, and I no longer have roommates and it's weird but yet at the same time nothing has changed. Also, I now have a new partner for fourth grade. Her name is Cara and she is from Colorado and she is a cool cat. I enjoy her very much and I think we make a good team.

Myself and others, in my opinion, have found a new sense of calmness and rejuvenation since our return from Christmas Vacation. There are many things that I want to change for the rest of the school year. One of those things is how I teach reading. I found that I have been struggling with this all year because I have 26 3rd graders and 26 fourth graders who all are reading at different levels. I have some kids reading at a 1st grade level and I have some who are reading at a 5th grade level and I haven't been able to help them all. So I have decided to change my reading curriculum so that I can do reading everyday for an hour and incorporate reading centers. This way I will be able to see each of the kids and get a better understanding of their reading skills. My other goal is in composition. So far I have taken my kids from not being able to write a sentence to writing a paragraph with a topic sentence and an end sentence without my help. It has taken a LONG time but it was worth it. So my hope is that we can keep building paragraphs and hopefully but springtime we can do an actual report!!! Exciting:) hahaha...

This past week was EXHAUSTING because I had conferences Tuesday and Wednesday from 8 am to 7 pm both days. I have never been so tired in my life at the end of those days. I went to bed at 9-930 both of those nights. I actually really enjoyed conferences because it was fun to see the similarities between my students and their parents. Many things clicked when I saw the parents and understood why my students act the way they do. Meeting with the parents was a very rewarding self esteem booster. I didn't realize I was having as large of an affect on my students as the parents said I had. It has been a struggle all year with my fourth graders as most of you know and there are many times I would think they would just hate me but for some reason they still speak highly of me and tell their parents that they love me. It really is true that many kids are looking for structure and a little authority in their lives because I think at home they don't have many responsibilities. Many of my parents asked me why their student is sooooo happy in my class but hate going to their spanish class. They get really nervous, cry and stress out in their spanish class. Most of the time my students do better in my class than in their spanish class. Of course it was a good feeling for me but I want them to be successful where ever, but again it just goes to show that children are able to excel and grow in a safe supportive environment. One of my parents told me that their child called me a fairy princess and called their spanish teacher the wicked witch!!! OOOOF:)

During one of my conferences I had one of those feel-good moments with one of the parents. She really made me see the difference I have made in my students lives so far and especially in her daughter's. It really made me think that what I am doing here does have meaning and purpose as a teacher. Her daughter is in my 3rd grade class and she is a real cutie. In the beginning of the year it felt like she wasn't with it and would ask me about every little thing. She had zero confindence in herself and in her English. She is such a sweet and polite girl and every morning she has to give me a hug and before she goes home she has to give me a hug. She has made almost a complete 180 because her grades used to be in the high 70's and her latest report cards all of her grades were in the high 90's. Her mom could not be happier and almost started crying when she told me this story. Apparently last year the girl had a terrible experience. Her teacher was awful and very strict. She would cry everyday before and after school because she hated it so much. Her teacher would make her sooo nervous that I guess she started to lose weight and lose her hair. Her mom had to take her to get some help. Her mom said it was one of the worst things in life. She told me, "Miss Jenna, a teacher has such a large impact in a student's entire life. The relationship they have and what they learn go with them everywhere in life. I want you to know that you have changed Valeria (the girl) soooo much. She absolutely loves you and adores you. She talks about you all the time and loves going to school. She doesn't worry about school any more and rarely gets upset. I used to have to help her with her homework every night and sit by her all the time and now she doesn't need my help. I don't have to sit by her and check how she is doing. She has more confidence and is succeeding and it is thanks to you. I don't know how to thank you." At this point I almost could have cried because I never would have thought I had that large of an impact. I knew Valeria struggled but I kept her in the front of the room and kept incouraging her. This has given me even more assurance that teaching is what I am meant to do in life and I absolutely love it!

Oh! on Friday, Gina and I went to the movie Australia and let me tell you its was AMAZING!! I love it. I laughed. I cried. I laughed. I cried. I definitely recommend it as a must see and Hugh Jackman is nice to look at too and the little boy will melt your heart. :)

Next week should be a pretty normal week so have a great one!!!