Sweet Summertime

What an absolutely exciting time of year it is--yes, I realize it is far from Christmas and that is clearly my favorite holiday, but June also provides much awesomeness of its own!  For starters, all of our new teachers came last week.  More than 300 folks are joining us in classrooms throughout the region for the next two years.  While I generally love induction (the 4 day span of introductory sessions), this year was especially exciting.  Everyone has their placement already, much sooner than normal.  This is both a good thing and a bad thing.  It's awesome that our teachers can spend all summer learning how to be a great teacher, without stressing about where/what they'll actually be teaching.  It's bad because not all schools have figured out the openings that they'll have, if all of their current teachers are coming back, etc.  Although my former school hired 2 new teachers, it looks like they still have 2 openings--hopefully NOT resulting in students having long-term subs for the school year again.  What's so inspiring about this group is how optimistic and enthusiastic they are.  When someone would get called to go sign their contract because a principal or superintendent showed up, everyone would burst into applause and cheers.  This was not a one-time coincidence, this happened repeatedly.  This crew is so supportive of each other and it gives me extremely high hopes for what they'll do for students here.

June is also exciting because HELLO, it's summer!  While this big-kid job doesn't exactly give me the summer off, it's still a change of pace from the school year.  I spend more time planning/revising sessions that we'll be using in July and wrapping up all of my data from last year.  And, tonight when I looked out the back window I saw a lightning bug in the yard!  I don't think I've really noticed them in Mississippi before!  It definitely takes me back to days Cassie and I would chase them throughout the yard, either capturing them in a glass jar or smearing the glowing guts on our arms.  Gross, I know.

Also, June means my return to Minnesota for a little over one glorious week!  Cannot wait to spend some time with my Winona friends, to see Cassie & Joe, and to hang out on a lake while celebrating America, in my american flag swimsuit of course.

Life in the Delta is changing dramatically.  My roommate left for a three week adventure home and elsewhere throughout the US.  She'll return before I am back.  By the time I get back from my conference and vacation, she'll be entirely moved out.  The same person I've lived with for the last 4 years, the one who also agrees that our landlord should let us have a cat, the one who doesn't laugh when I eat a bowl of strawberries for supper or that I refuse to go in the attic terrified of what might be up there.  While there are two others who are planning on moving in and I like them just fine, it isn't going to be the same.  I hate change.  I hate saying goodbye to people and I've done that far too many times these last two weeks.  Why am I constantly putting myself in a place in which there is high turnover, it doesn't make anything easy.  However, I know that people can't stay forever, I feel the same.  I guess I just want them to stay as long as I do so I don't have to adjust to this location without some of my close friends!  Here is a photo that Lois and I took this morning before she headed out to Florida.  We took a very similar picture 4 years ago in July when we first got to the Delta.  It was only fitting we did it again.

Did I mention that it was 7:45 in the morning and the sun was in our eyes?

The only other exciting thing that has been happening lately is of course the weather...what else do we talk about?  We had crazy storms come through on Monday evening.  I was driving back from Greenville and saw huge storm clouds, while I thought it was going to start downpouring as soon as I got closer, I realized that it was insane wind.  The weather reports said up to 70 mph wind.  There were black clouds being created from the wind blowing dirt up from open fields.  During one brief moment, I was worried that there was a tornado near me because the wind was blowing up so much dirt and dust that I couldn't see beyond it--no tornado though.  However, these cray storms lasted throughout the night, blowing the tin off of the factory roof next door to me, blowing down limbs, branches and in some cases entire trees.  Our yard was pretty much a mess with several large limbs down.  I spent a good hour picking up the front yard (all of that practice I had from picking up willow tree branches as a kid--still not my favorite task) and left the back yard for the yard man (there could be snakes back there).

Anyway, I'll be spending the next week involved in the chaos of writing final orientation sessions, doing a ton of prework for the conference I am going to, and getting packed both for the conference and for a week in Minnesota...it's going to be difficult to be productive with all of those exciting things on the mind!

GOOD LUCK this weekend to Jeannie who is running a 5K and Cassie who is running Grandma's Marathon in Duluth!  Run like the wind!