The End and the Beginning

We had another amazing week! Tuesday was my last day teaching my students. I taught them about light years and just how much space there is between objects in our universe. Their minds were blown! It was a fun lesson. I scaled out the solar system to fit in our classroom and then again on a bigger scale to fit in our courtyard.

(Just for fun: if you scale out our solar system where every 100 million km equals one meter, from the Sun to Pluto is 60 meters. On that scale, the sun has a 1.3 cm diameter (about the diameter of the width of my index finger) and Earth has a diameter of a single strand of hair (12 micrometers)! If you move the scale down one power (distance from the Sun to Pluto is 6 meters (diameter of the sun is 1.3 mm: about the size of my wedding ring band)), the next closest star to our sun would be in Hawaii. Yeah...I was doing a LOT of math to prep for this lesson.)

We used the speed of light to calculate how long it takes light to travel in our solar system. Astronomy is so fun to teach. I had three great days of teaching astronomy subjects (seasons, stars, and light years) before my time at Schofield was finished. Wednesday was my last day of student teaching. It was kind of an awkward day because...do you teach? Do you party? I didn't know what to expect because what we did wasn't up to me, it was up to my mentor teacher. Well lucky me, I was blessed with an incredible mentor teacher. She organized a going-away-day that wasn't awkward and gave me closure.

First she bought me a "teacher starter kit" with all sorts of first year teacher supplies. Second, she made a huge card that we sent around each of the class periods for the kids to sign and write nice things if they wanted. We taught about our sun in detail so it didn't really matter that the kids were preoccupied making going-away cards for me. So many of my students made gifts for me beyond the giant card that made me feel so loved! I had about seven personal cards from my 4th period class. One student bought me a dozen roses for crying out loud! "Roses for Mrs. Rose!" she said. They are so sweet. My 4th period class was definitely my favorite. Every single student in that class is phenomenal. They all gave me a hug on the way out the door, and half of them came back at the end of the day for one last hug and asked me for my "autograph." It was priceless! Some of the things the kids wrote brought tears to my eyes. I love those kids and I'll never forget them. I kept a journal during student teaching and on Friday I took the time to write about each of my students. I almost cried saying goodbye to them. I was very proud of myself for keeping it together. I hope to high heaven I get the 7th/8th grade teaching position at that school in the fall so that this goodbye wasn't goodbye at all, just "farewell" until fall when I could have them again in my 8th grade class! I've completed my application except for the certification part which I'm still waiting on. As soon as I have that in I can start applying to schools in the district and principals will call/email for interviews.

My giant card framed

One of my students came up with the poem. It reads:
"We're glad we were your students
We've learned to love you so
We can't believe the end is near
We hate to see you go!

Remember all the fun we had
It's been a great adventure
But most of all remember
You're a VERY special TEACHER"

Wednesday night Schofield  jazz band put on a concert that I surprised Justin with. The students served Olive Garden and the kids played some awesome songs! My favorites were when they played "Good Time," "Moves Like Jagger," and "Call Me Maybe." so fun!

The classroom I taught in.

Geologic Time Project

Biomes Project

Geologic Time Project

Meanwhile I am turning up my Mary Kay business. I have a full week this week as I'm doing facials with several ladies in my ward. My goal is to do 30 faces in 15 days. My goal is to do 18 this week! I'm excited to start that up again. I have a lot of goals for the summer. I'm happy to have this business to do at my pace. I have a website now for my customers to do online shopping! You can shop anytime here!

Thursday my visiting teacher took me out to lunch to celebrate being officially "graduated." I owed a debt to the school that I finally paid off that morning so they sent me an email that the school had graduated me and that I could expect my diploma in the mail soon. I guess it was mailed to Arco so Mom is forwarding it to me. Excellent! It feels weird...I don't feel like a college graduate with a B.S. degree but I am! Crazy. My visiting teacher is amazing. She and her husband have seven kids. They moved into the ward at the same time as us so we have lots in common. They are the family we gave our couch to. We got that back last week. She invited Justin and I over for tacos on Saturday night with one of our investigators and new members (Sharon and Bob). We love spending time with the Heymore family!

Bob, Justin, Me, Sharon, Sis. Maggert, Sis. Baker

Friday Justin took me out to eat to celebrate being done student teaching. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings and then a crepe dessert place that does ice cream in a crepe with toppings. It was delicious! He had also ordered me an ice cream cake so we picked that up to eat throughout the week. We also ended up buying curtains for our bedroom that night. The blinds aren't sufficient for keeping the heat out even though our bedroom only gets morning sun. It doesn't matter...it's 80 degrees before the sun comes up! The curtains have really made a difference in keeping it cooler. It got to 103 this week....yikes!

It now says "Former Student" on mybyui website...I guess that makes it pretty official too!

The Crepe Shack had all sorts of board games we played while we ate our dessert.

Crepe with chocolate ice cream, strawberries, banana, nutella, and whipped cream! Yum!

Oreo ice cream cake!

Saturday we went to a wedding that was held at our chapel. The couple being married is investigating the church. They had a really nice ceremony and they had dinner and dancing after but we couldn't stay because we had given the sisters a ride and they had to leave so that was too bad we missed out on that.

That's pretty much our news. Justin is rocking it at work. He is getting more involved with the meetings his bosses have. He has been doing a lot of training on the new system he's implemented so he's definitely in a good place as far as his job goes. We're so grateful for the life we have here! Oh, I also bought a fedora...I plan to protect my skin from the sun this summer and to do so with style. That's it for this week.