Revisiting my goals

Well I've made it! Three weeks of freedom await me - and to those non-teachers reading this and judging: just go teach 29 six-year-olds for a while and tell me you don't need a mental health break.

I figure this would be an appropriate time of year to revisit my goals (read about them here).

Goal #1 - Eat organic food. I can proudly say that this goal has been accomplished! Paul and I have a great variety of vegetarian recipes to choose from for our weekly meals, and we splurge on weekends or when we go out we eat meat. The food we buy is almost always organic AND LOCAL! Jean-Talon market has been a great place for this, but the grocery stores are also great, with two aisles full of organic food, it's hard to go wrong. It's something we believe in and we've been doing well.

Goal #2 - Finding a spiritual group. Major fail. Uh oh. I was afraid this would happen. I feel like anytime you mention the word God or belief people automatically look at you as if you had three eyes. I've had great discussions with friends and family and Paul, of course, but I haven't been able to find that peace and prayer time that I had during the Bible Study I did last year. I'll keep looking!

Goal #3 - Exercise. This went well for a while. After school on Tuesday and Thursday, my two colleagues and I would go swimming. Swimming is AMAZING! It's great for my knee and it's a great way to keep in shape. And it's FREE! Public swimming pools are awesome. But now I don't have the same ride as I did before, so we don't go by the pool on our way home anymore. After Christmas, my new carpool driver colleague friend (hehe what a title for a friend!) mentioned that there is a new hot yoga place opening near our school, so we might go there! I also should try to go to the hot yoga place by my house during the break. I'll keep trying!

In conclusion: I eat well, exercise somewhat and need to pray more!

Holiday Newsletter

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What the elves are making this year...

Our 'writing a letter to Santa' has been especially rewarding to me as a teacher this year, because my students have come so far and can actually write! I am very proud. Along the way, I learned that there are some toys that never go out of style, for example:

-Barbies/dolls/Barbie accessories
-legos (especially Star Wars legos)
-books

The 'new' items on the list are the techy things such as:
-DSI
-PSP
-Wii

etc... really, I hope Santa is up-to-date on his technology and acronyms, because I don't think children would be very happy to end up with Pretty Sparkly Princesses when they really wanted some hand-held video game device.

In other news, it was my annual Christmas decorating party yesterday, which I only partly hosted with my mom at my parent's house. I say partly because, to be honest, my mom did most of the cooking and cleaning. I just came up with ideas. The decorating aspect was a success. I am lucky to have older cousins who have the cutest kids EVER, so we had two 1-year-olds, a 2-year-old and a 4 year-old helping to decorate the tree this year (and only one of the little guys was into un-decorating!). Then we ate - oh how I love Christmas food! I learned how to make tourtières and cassoulet with my mom last weekend! We also had mulled wine and cider, great salads and too many scrumptious desserts! After that, the cute kids helped decorate the gingerbread cookies I made. The one-year-olds were way past their bedtime at this point, so they didn't participate, but the other two kids did a great job. I had to supervise the chocolate chips though - I guess they prefer chocolate to gingerbread! For all the Puebla girls, it definitely was not the same without you, but you now have a very special place on our family Christmas tree! PS - I know I promised pictures, but my camera ran out of batteries, so you'll just have to wait and see!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Reports cards are finished, parent teacher interviews (until 9pm!) are finished, and yesterday was one of the best days ever! I woke up at 6:45am (this is after the 7:30am-9pm workday on Thursday) and got ready for work. I left my house and noticed the stairs were super duper slippery, as was the rest of the sidewalk and street. I start walking down to meet my lovely friend who gives me a ride to school everyday and my phone rings. I wish I remembered what song I was listening to at the time. Probably 'Empire State of Mind' by Alicia Keys. I LOVE that song! It puts me in the best mood and is so inspiring. So I clicked on my headphones to switch to the call (oh how I love technology) and MM (my first grade teacher colleague) says, 'Have you heard? The school's closed!'.... ahhh the joy! So I turned around and went back home. I had already had too much coffee for my own good, so going back to sleep was not an option. I watched mindless TV instead and waited for Paul to wake up. He did and we decided to go for coffee. Second Cup on St. Laurent, two eggnog lattes and chocolatines later, we were in deep conversations about the world and our lives and our future together. I can't start to describe how much I love him! Then we stopped at the Dollar Store (I took advantage of my day off to buy lots of stickers, Christmas stuff, etc. for my students). There is a sale going on at Jacob right now (it's the best clothing store for all non-Canadians reading this) where you bring your old clothes and each item is worth 25% off a new item you purchase. They then donate your old clothes to the needy. I brought two old pairs of pants and two old T-shirts and off to Jacob we went. Well... it was American Black Friday, which meant sales in Canada as well!!! Yay for me, instead of 25% off, it was 40% off all last marked prices. I got new pants and a new turtleneck kind of shirt. We then went to the Gap because Paul needed new jeans. Now we both have what I like to think of as our new 'Christmas' outfits. Who knows whether we'll actually wear our outfits for Christmas or not, but you know what I mean... I had a lunch date with a friend I hadn't seen in far too long, and we had fun catching up at a cute vegetarian restaurant on Milton by McGill. It reminded me of the good old days of being an undergrad student. Snow started falling, gently and beautifully. It was just perfect. Paul and I then went to the movies (if you remember from a previous post, I LOVE going to the movies) and saw 'Love and other drugs' which I recommend. It's a tear-jerker, though, so bring your kleenex and wear as little makeup as possible. Oh and I probably haven't posted about this yet but 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1' is AMAZING! It is so true to the book, the actors are great, and the views are just breath-taking. So there you have it, my first 'snow' day of the year. There is now about an inch of snow on the ground and I am probably one of the happiest people around!

A question a day keeps the doctor away?

I have this amazing student who is just too cute and always asks me the most random questions. I'll try to remember most of them and the context they were asked in (it's way cuter that way).

#1 - We were doing an activity about Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone. As he colours, he raises his hand and asks:

 "Who invented shoes?"

"That's a great questions, we'll have to look it up" I answered (turns out shoes have been around for quite a while, basically since human beings realized rocks could hurt our feet, but running shoes have been around since rubber has been around and some say the first were made for basketball (I got my info from Wikipedia))

#2 - Literally out of the blue one day:

"Where did our universe come from?"

"I'm not too sure I understand your question, what do you mean exactly?"

"Well, did someone invent the universe, or did it come from somewhere else?"

(keep in my I teach at a nondenominational school)

"mmm..... have you asked your parents?"

"ya, but they don't know"

"mmm... ok, well let me think about it"

---A day goes by---

"I know who we can ask because he knows EVERYTHING!!!!"

"Really, who's this?"

"My kindergarten teacher"

"Sounds like a plan, you should ask him"

---Time passes---

"So did you ask your kindergarten teacher?"

"Yup"

"So, where did the universe come from?"

"Well, there are lots of different ideas, but lots of people think that there was this big explosion that happened and then BOOM, there was the universe."

"Sounds really interesting."

---More time passes (this was evidently a question that required lots of time and thought in order to be answered to this student's content)---

"You know, some people think God created the universe."

"Ya, I know. What do you think?"

"I don't know."

"I think it's OK not to know, but you've already got two great answers to your question!"

#3 - During center time, when the students can choose their activity, he comes over to me and asks:

"Who invented school?"

"Do you mean the idea of school or our school?"

"No, no, just our school." 

(I'm thinking: phew, an easy one I can look up on our school's website)

"Oh I'll look it up and let you know."

---weeks pass by---

"You still haven't told me who invented the school."

(um ooops, I still haven't told him!)

#4 - While doing a calligraphy assignment, he raises his hand:

"But how can Spiderman see?"

"Um, sorry, what?"

"Well, Spiderman has a mask, but there aren't any holes for his eyes, so how can he see?"

"Oh Ok I understand, come here"

(we have those blinds that are perfect to use as an example, if you look at them from further away they look opaque, but if you get closer, you can see through them because they have little holes)

Ok that's all I can think of right now, but I'll post more if he comes up with more great questions, which I'm sure he will!

This might be the best weekend ever...

Friday night: dinner at an Italian restaurant, the Hangover guy's new comedy Due Date (funny but not as funny as the Hangover)

Saturday: super productive correcting, cutting and pasting, planning etc. morning, late lunch at Santropol (I think this may be my favourite cafe in the world), Toy Story 3 and E. T. movie night

Sunday: baking blueberry muffins (from scratch from this recipe), www.stumbleupon.com for the better part of the lazy day, and perhaps going to an authentic taco place for lunch later today

What makes it the best weekend ever? (please be prepared for the gross, gooey, cheesiness that is about to take place) Sharing it all with my hilarious, thoughtful, curious, intelligent best friend who just happens to be my husband.

Stress relief and Halloween

My life seems to be full of ups and downs. I guess that's normal, but I am stuck in this cycle of being mega-stressed, then being OK, then being mega-stressed again, etc. This week I was talking to my car-pool teaching friends about this and we came up with a nice list of stress relieving activities and ideas. I am going to be generous and share it with you!

-physical activity (we go swimming, but if your knees are OK you could run or do something else)
-yoga and or meditation (this helps to control your breathing and focus on your internal organs so I hear, I haven't actually tried it yet)
-a glass of wine (I prefer red, and it sure does take the edge off after a long day)
-a bath (after living in bath-free Mexico, I relish in taking a nice, long, warm bath)
-writing down and analyzing the stress-causing things (this helps to identify what it is that's stressing you out and freeing it from your mind in a way, I do this once in a while but I don't find it's the best one for me)
-there is one more thing... but I'll let you figure that one out and keep this blog PG-13

As for Halloween, we celebrated at school yesterday and it was a massive success! All of the cycle 1 (that's grades 1&2 for non-Quebeckers) teachers and I dressed up as one of our colleagues (a grade 2 teacher). When we told our friends and families about this, they were all appalled: "Oh no, she is going to be so offended." "Wait, isn't that like making fun of her?" We knew her well enough to anticipate her reaction correctly - she LOVED it! It was such a hoot! So there were 5 Madame Ls at school yesterday and our students even joined in and called us Madame L. It was awesome! I am very very sorry I don't have a picture of it, but I will try to describe our costumes so you can imagine the 5 of us. First of all, Madame L was dressed up as Glinda, the nice witch from the East, in a beautiful pink dress with silver stars on it and a silver wand accessory. MM was dressed up as 'leather L', so she had a leather skirt and jacket on with a white button up shirt and a fur belt, her black high heels completed the look. I was 'outdoorsy L' so I had taken my inspiration from pictures of her at camp with the kids. I had running shoes on, black yoga pants, a white T-shirt and sweater, and a brown vest. M was dressed up as 'working L' so she had a beige pant suit on. JC (who is a man) was dressed up as 'just out of the shower L' so he had a bathrobe on. The real killer was the blond wigs we all got, we had matching hair, and matching bright lipstick and our make-up was really well-done, exactly like L's! Oh and we also had little black roller suitcases, because apparently last school year that was her 'school bag'.  So really, it wasn't at all offensive, I think she took it more like a compliment that we all wanted to look like her. It goes without saying that she does dress really well, but it's not your regular teacher look, which is why we chose to dress up like her. So fun.

Tonight I'm going to wear the same wig, a sparkly shirt and black pants and heels and I'll be 'la femme Nikita' or Lady Gaga... it all depends on if I find a toy gun or how I do my makeup.