Valentine's Day

It's been another successful week with student teaching and work for me and Justin. Monday we did our first visit to a family in the ward as ward missionaries. We get new assignments every few weeks to visit 2-3 families. It's been a good experience so far...now we get to stretch a bit more and visit less active members and invite them to hear the missionaries or come to church. We have a ward activity coming up and they're playing Ultimate so we're excited for that.

This week I taught glaciers, groundwater, and natural resources (renewable and nonrenewable). I did a game with them that I made up last year that demonstrates how renewable resources work. I put a piece of candy in a bowl, one for each student, and tell them they can get a piece now or they can wait and after each round I double whatever amount is left. I do that for several rounds and then split whatever they earn at the end. I bought two bags of dum dums totaling 720 pieces of candy! I wanted all my classes to do it so I needed a lot. It was fun to watch them freak out on each other if they tried to take a piece of candy. It's a fun way to teach that if we use natural resources carefully and allow time for them to replenish themselves, there will be enough to go around for all. They also made posters showing how to convert a renewable resource into electricity and what the electricity is used for.

We decided for Valentine's Day that we wanted to save some money (gazelle intense!) so we went grocery shopping to make a meal at home. Well, Justin's boss called him in on Thursday and gave him some very encouraging words as well as some gift cards to a nice restaurant. Justin has totally revamped the way the company tracks their inventory, ordering, etc and his boss told him they really appreciate all he's done and that after 90 days they're going to "talk" so...that sounds like a pay raise to me. Since his boss gave him a gift card to eat out, we made our Valentine's dinner Thursday night instead of Friday night. Justin bought some nice fish and I made cilantro lime rice. It was delicious!

Love the sunset!

Thursday night I had the first signs of sickness. I felt a scratch in my throat and woke up Friday with a sore throat. Typical! I get a long weekend and my body decides to get sick....lovely. Friday the students didn't have school but the staff had to go in for training. Nevada is putting a program into place where legislators (or at least people who work for them) come and evaluate teachers. I think the most I've learned from my student teaching experience so far has been the politics of teaching... which I don't like. But they fed us breakfast and lunch that day. Slidin' Thru catered our lunch; it's like a taco bus but for sliders and it was awesome!

For Valentine's Day I gathered letters for Justin from family and friends to give to him. I emailed his closest friends and family weeks ago asking for contributions and then I did a scavenger hunt with them, each letter with a clue to the next letter. Justin works early on Fridays so I dropped him off at work at 6 and then had from 6-7 to get ready and set it up for when he got home at 1 to do the hunt while I was still at school until 2:30. He loved it! For me, Justin wrote out a bunch of "coupons" for me and then cut them up like a puzzle, so after I put the puzzle together I had coupons like "a shirt for $15" and stuff like that. We went out to dinner and I ordered a delicious steak! I never order steak - too pricey - but we had a gift card so I went for it. It was a great Valentine's Day.

Three gift cards! Woot!

Justin's letters and clues; my puzzle

my puzzle coupons

Saturday my cold really set in and I spent the whole day at home. Today I stayed home from church so as not to infect the ward and to rest up some more. I have the worst immune system...so why did I choose to be a teacher?? Hello! Kids = millions of germs. Tomorrow school is closed so I have the day off. At least I'll be able to rest up for one more day before I have to get back into using my voice all day long. Tomorrow I'm helping my friend dye her hair since she also has the day off from student teaching. Maybe it will tempt me to get highlights in my hair again...we'll see!