Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

God has been so good to us today. After waking up at 7 AM and waking the rest of my family by saying “IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!” we all gathered downstairs to open our presents and excitedly see if we had good Skype service. I was not feeling hopeful after the call was dropped twice, but the saying is “Third time’s a charm” right? Dad was able to watch all of us open our presents and it was the next best thing to him actually being there.

If you know me well, then you know that my newfound obsession is the sitcom Friends. I started watching it when I got to school and have been booking through each season like nobody’s business. Therefore, the best present I got today was a coffee mug that says “Central Perk” and looks just like the mugs they drink out of on the show. I was very excited!! I cannot wait to sit on my little couch at school, watch Friends and drink coffee out of my “Central Perk” coffee mug. Of course homework will get in the way, but I will have to work out a date night for me, my coffee and my Friends.

Another favorite out of the presents I got for Christmas would be all of the books! Me and books have a strong bond. I love reading anything and everything; however, this does not include text books. That is one of the downfalls of college…there is no time to read for pleasure. Usually I read one book at a time, but here lately I have gotten good at reading several different books and still being able to keep track of each story line and everything else in between. I am reading 4 different books right now: “Mrs. Lincoln” which is a book on the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, “Boundaries in Dating” which is a great book that helps you develop self-control in healthy dating relationships so you’re better able to find and commit to a marriage partner (I highly recommend this book), “Sherlock Holmes”, and “Love Finds you in North Pole Alaska” which is a Christian novel my Mom gave me that so far is pretty good. I need to get a move on and finish off a few books before going back to school.

I hope that all of my friends and family have had as good of a Christmas as me and my family have. God has given us incredible strength to get through the holidays without our family all together. The following days may drag and seem to take forever, but I know that in time the deployment will be over and all 6 of us will be together again. Until that time, God will continue to keep us all safe and anxiously awaiting the beginning of February.  

Christmas is the best!!!

At the moment, I am having a hard time putting down my Mom’s chex mix long enough to type up a blog post.  It’s so good!  One of the best things about Christmas time is all of the yummy food there is to eat! I am so excited about the holidays.  The one thing that would make this perfect would be if my Dad were here.  We only have 46 days left!!! How exciting!!

Yesterday I finished off the rest of my finals and I am officially done with my first semester at Regent University.  What a good feeling.  I love my school so much! I am so thankful that that is where I am right now.  I feel like even though it is a Christian school I am still being challenged so much in my walk with God.  After all, you shouldn’t just take something you hear for what it is, but you should always dig deep into God’s word and look it up for yourself.  I would much rather be challenged than not, therefore, Regent is the best school ever.  Not to mention, the people there are awesome!!

Last night me and Hayley and my Mom went with our choir to a retirement home to sing Christmas carols.  There was a woman there who was 102 years old.  Isn’t that unbelievable?  It was so fun singing there and I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wished I were singing Christmas carols at my Grandmas nursing home just for her.  I miss her and wish we were able to see her more often.

Over Christmas break I was supposed to work some.  I stopped working after I started school but was going to work over my Christmas break to keep my name in the payroll system so that once summer hit, I wouldn’t have to get rehired.  If I haven’t mentioned it before, I work at Kinder Care Learning Center.  It is the best job ever! I love it so much! The kids are so much fun.  I have kept a journal since I was 9 years old and was looking back in one of them one day and read that I said that I hoped when I got a job it would be a job that I loved so much and that I would never dread going into work every day.  That is exactly what Kinder Care was for me.  A job I loved and was so passionate about!! And it made me so certain that I am studying the right thing in school and I want to be a teacher more than anything.  Unfortunately yesterday I got some sad news.  My boss let me know that the managers of Kinder Care have become stricter that usual and said that anyone who hasn’t work for 24 hours within the last quarter should be booted from the payroll system.  I lost my job at Kinder Care.  I was devastated.  My dream come true job is no longer mine.  I know that my boss would hire me back in a heartbeat, but I would not be hired soon enough to be able to work over my break.  But, I will most definitely be stopping by sometime soon so that I can see everyone and all of my little kiddos. 

Tonight is the dress rehearsal for our Christmas cantata at church.  It is going to be a swell time!  I better go get ready for that!  Adios!!

Just a few thoughts before bed

I’ve learned that how well your observation hours go all depends on the teacher you are placed with.  It is either going to be super awkward, or you’re going to love it and learn so much.  Thankfully my experience was the later.  I absolutely loved it and learned so much.  I was placed with the most amazing teacher who I admire so much.  She made teaching and handling situations in the classroom look so easy.  She absolutely amazed me.  On Friday I had to complete 4 hours.  So, I got up at 6 AM, fought traffic and made it there just in time to get my 4 hours done.  I was there over lunch time and sat next to this little boy who was full of questions for me.  “What’s your favorite food?”  What’s your favorite drink?”  “How old are you?”  “What time does the bell ring at your school?”  He was so cute and so funny.  He didn’t really understand the concept of college and so I was explaining to him that after college is when you get a job and start working.  He looked at me and said “Wow! When I am in college you’re gonna have a job!!” I sure would hope so! ; ) 

So, our school supports an organization called Invisible Children.  There is an invisible war in Africa that is led by a man by the name of Joseph Kony and he is terrorizing 4 different countries.  It is the longest running conflict on the continent and the soldiers are children that Joseph Kony has abducted and forced to fight.  Invisible Children is a movement seeking to end this conflict and bring the children back to their homes.  Invisible Children is seeking to rebuild their schools, educate future leaders, and to provide jobs in Northern Uganda.  In order to raise money for Invisible Children our school hosted a walk-in lock-in at a nearby school.  We paid to participate and the money is going to be used towards Invisible Children.  At 10 last night a group of us from Regent walked over to the school and stayed up all night long and returned to school at 8 AM.  We had an amazing time of Praise and Worship that I will not soon forget.  There is nothing like singing music to God in a gym with a ton of your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.  I met lots of new people, which was nice.  It was a really great night.  Once 6 AM hit, staying awake became very difficult and only a handful of people stayed up, me being one of them.  As soon as I got back to school I crashed and slept for a good while.

Unfortunately after I woke up, I had finals to worry about.  School is now going to get even more hectic than last week.  I have exams on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  I was working on my History final and was so overwhelmed by the insane study guide given to me by my teacher.  There are 65 short answer questions that I have to be able to answer Who? What? Where? Why?, and When? about, and then I also have to be able to give the historical importance of the term.  Well, after figuring out all of this information each answer is about 10 lines long.  Then there are also 5 essay questions.  And, did I mention only 5 short answer questions and 2 essay questions are going to be on the exam?  I don’t know how I will even have time to study for my other exams with this one on my plate. 

Well, I am off to bed because I can hardly keep my head up and it hurts from all of the memorizing. 

Goodnight!

Everyday is a great day with God by my side

I had more observation hours today and it went great.  I took tons of notes, and not because I had to but because I wanted to.  This teacher has so many good ideas and I don’t want to forget any of them.  I watched the kids during their PE this morning and they ran around this huge track and I must say I was impressed.  I told this kid that he ran really fast and he looked at me and said “No I didn’t! It took me like, 60 years!!”  Somebody has picked up on exaggeration early in life. ; )  Another kid asked me what my name was and I when I told HIM (keep in mind, this was a boy, not a girl!) it was Jana he said “Hmmm…it sound just like Hannah Montana.”    Not exactly the kind of person I want to be compared to, and not the response I expected out of a 5 year old boy.  Hahaha!  I look forward to what kind of funny stuff I will hear them say, because they are hilarious!!

I have to get a background check done for my observation hours I am doing and today I had to go to the Police Department to get fingerprinted.  It was quite the adventure.  It was so cool seeing police officers come out of the building with shiny gold badges like they wear in the movies.  It also was kinda freaky though, because there were lots of strange people around that made me quite uncomfortable.  Let’s just say that police stations have come a long way since Andy Griffith.  Once I finally found my way to the office upstairs, gave the man my ID and was handed the paperwork, the man decided to tell me they only accepted cash.  This was going to be a problem.  I ended up having to go to City Hall across the street because they had an ATM.  This is about when I started to get frustrated because I forgot my pin number AGAIN and had to call my sister to remind me what it was but I could hardly hear her because just about every employee in City Hall was standing in front of a huge Christmas tree in the lobby wearing a bright red or green sweater singing Christmas carols.  Finally I got what I needed and was able to go and get fingerprinted.  I have to say some of the coolness was diminished when I found out they just scan your hand these days and you don’t get to use good ole black ink, but it was still cool enough.  It’s something I have never done before, so it was fun even though it did make me feel like a criminal or something. 

I had my last lecture today for my History class I have been taking this semester.  I am so happy that I have no more lectures from Professor Xiong.  Can’t pronounce her name? Neither can her students.  In fact, nobody knows what she is saying half the time because of her thick accent.  It has made passing this class quite a challenge but I am hoping I can still make that happen.  Go figure I would end up with the teacher with an accent.  I am the worst at understanding accents.  Half the notes I take I end up scratching out because I can’t understand the key word in the sentence she is saying.  Hopefully next semester all of my teachers will speak very clear English.  : )

I talked to my grandpa on the phone today.  It was so great to talk to him and hear how well he and my grandma are doing.  It was really funny because he was upset I didn’t call him on his new cell phone.  I think he is really excited about having one because I told him I didn’t even know his number but I would get it from my Mom and he said “Can I give it to you right now?”  But he made sure to tell me not to ever leave him a message because he doesn’t know how to check his voicemail.  He said, “If I don’t answer just hang up, don’t even worry about leaving me a message because I won’t ever hear it.”  Haha! He is so funny! 

Thank you Lord for a busy yet fun and adventurous day! Because every day is a good day with you by my side!

Things to look forward to!

Bus-y [biz-ee]

Adjective, bus-i-er, bus-i-est, verb, bus-ied, bus-y-ing

Adjective

1.       Actively and attentively engaged in work or a pastime: busy with her work

2.       Not at leisure; otherwise engaged: He couldn’t see any visitors because he was busy.

3.       Full of or characterized by activity: a busy life

Yeap, that just about describes what my life is going to be like for the next two weeks.  Today was so busy that I just finished my homework at 12 AM.  Although my day was busy it was also a fun day.  My alarm clock going off in the AM didn’t make me very happy, and it usually doesn’t take me long to be completely awake and ready to start my day.  Today I was feeling pretty sluggish.  Especially since I could barely get out of my bed.  Saturday night was the Regent Christmas ball and after dancing for 2 and a half hours straight my legs are a little (actually a lot) on the sore side.  I could barely walk this morning and was not happy when I remembered I needed to dress professional today and wear heels.  I am sure that me trying to go down the stairs in heels and sore calves was a funny sight this morning.

I had to dress professional because today I began the process of my 10 hours of observations I have to complete this week for my Introduction to teaching class.  I have been so excited about starting my observations.  After classes I rushed back to my room, made a sandwich, grabbed the paperwork I needed, sat in the car for what seemed like forever waiting for my GPS to find a satellite and finally was on my way to Luxford Elementary to observe the Kindergarten classroom.  Boy was I ever in for a treat.  The entire thing made me so excited to start teaching!!  I had so much fun!  The teacher I was assigned to was very nice and took time to sit down with me and answer any question I had for her.  I had tons!!  The kids were absolutely adorable and made me miss my job at the daycare center back home.  I have no idea how the teachers can keep such a straight face all the time because there were a few times that those kids had me laughing hysterically.  They truly do say the funniest things ever!!  Because I am having a hard time deciding exactly what grade I want to teach, this kind of helped me to have a better idea what levels of learning certain grades are on.  I took in everything, including all of the awesome decorations this teacher had up in her classroom, storing it away for future ideas when I have a class of my own.  I cannot wait to do more observations this week and to learn more about becoming a teacher.  Doing these types of things really lights that passion I have inside of me for teaching and for kids.  I am so excited about my future. 

Because of the time I am spending in classes and at Luxford Elementary school doing observations, it is causing me to not be able to get homework done until late in the day, which lead to late nights of studying.  But I have a very early morning tomorrow and a long day ahead of me, so I need to go and get some shut eye!

Goodnight!