It’s been a while since I’ve posted to my blog, but I was quite busy over the last month of my summer break with writing and family stuff. That and I really couldn’t think of anything good to write about. One of my favorite uncles has permanently relocated to here to Southeast Missouri from Washington state, and I couldn’t be more excited. I drove my parents up to St. Louis Lambert International Airport (a first-time trip for me) to pick him up. Right now he is living with my parents until he gets a little more settled. But I’m sure glad to have him around.
I also attended my very first St. Louis Cardinals baseball game at Busch Stadium earlier this month. My husband and I went with our friends, and we ate expensive ballpark food, stayed in a decent hotel, rode the MetroLink, and watched America’s favorite past time. Unfortunately, the Cardinals lost, but it was still a lot of fun. Baseball is one of the few sports I can actually follow, really. But the next day we went to the St. Louis Zoo and saw the new polar bear and the sea lion show. We saw the other animals, too, but that was one of my favorite parts.
This month, after a half week of meetings, school officially began on August 13. Normally we start around August 15, but that fell on a weekend. However, I’ve always thought we started a bit too early. It seems when I was a kid, we always began school around the last week of August, usually on the 24th or 25th. Some schools in the country don’t even begin until after Labor Day until September and go until June. I was talking about this early beginning to some of my colleagues who have lived here for years; many of them tell me that they used to start after Labor Day and get out the last week of May, just before Memorial Day.
With the beginning of a new school year comes setting up a classroom for a batch of brand new students. This group of freshman has been described as a bit of a difficult group, but I’m still optimistic that I’ll really like my students this year. I haven’t quite memorized the names of my students, yet, but most of them seem to be nice so far.
Right now I think the most I will miss about summer vacation is getting to write whenever I want, no set schedule, lunch once a week with Rachel, and wearing comfortable clothes during the day. I was hoping to be much farther on my book than halfway through Chapter 6. When school begins, it’s always a bit of an adjustment to settle into a schedule, so I’ll likely be even slower on my writing and on updating this page. But it looks like it’ll be a good year.
Pictures from the month of August: