Just Everyday Life

Don't worry!  I'm still here!  

School started, you see.  It's not so much that I'm super busy because of it (I am, but not overwhelmingly so), it's more that I'm so darn tired.  We had curriculum night this past week and I had to do a presentation for parents for 45 minutes.  At my last school, we had 15 minutes.  I was in bed by 8:30 on Friday night.  I'm a wild one, I tell ya.

There are a few things I'm still trying to figure out.  It's weird being new.  I know what I'm doing but I don't all at the same time.  We had birthday lunch for a couple October birthdays the other day, and I was supposed to bring cheese.  The email only went to our team but included a staff member's birthday who wasn't on our team and one who was.  So the night before, I realized I had no idea if I was only bringing cheese for our team or the entire staff.  I also don't have anyone's phone number (we've just emailed a bunch) so I brought a TON OF CHEESE.  I cubed some fancy cheese and brought a gigantic bag of shredded cheese from Cosco just in case.  Lunch was only for our team.  I had cheese for an army.  

But honestly...I'm unbelievably fortunate.  My school rocks.  My students are awesome.  My district is pretty darn cool.  My new principal is fantastic.  

Even now when people ask why I moved to Washington and I explain my homelessness and quitting my fantastic job and just deciding to go for it because why not... I start to think "I'm so lucky this turned out great because the potential for tragedy was large".  Everyone here tells me how brave it was to do, but I never felt brave.   I felt ready.

Somehow I ended up with the best case scenario for my move out here.  

I love being closer to a few of my friends.  We met up and headed a bit south to Emerald Ridge for the horse races.  I have never done that before and probably won't become a huge horse race gambler.  It was a lot of waiting for 30 minutes then watching horses run for 15 seconds, then eating my weight in kettle corn (yummm) while we wait another 30 minutes.  Actually, for health reasons I probably shouldn't hang out there on the regular.  I'm glad I went though because it was fun to see my friends and chat...and one of my students also has horses that his family races there, so we had an instant connection (ok fine, there might have been a bit of exaggeration on my part, but in teaching relationships and connections are everything).  

It was good times.

I have been out doing things...not quite all blog worthy.  Here's a few outings I've attended (just so you know I'm not holed up in my awesome little home gazing at the mountains...but I do that a lot, too.)

Happy hour with coworkers after the first week of school.  Glad I went because I don't see anybody during the day so I have no clue who a lot of  my coworkers are!  I see people in the hallways with school badges that I swear I've never seen before.

I met up with a friend for dinner and wonderful conversation a couple weekends ago.

I went with one of my fellow team members for some happy hour shrimp this past week.  It was delish.  I'm taking a nice slow jump onto the seafood train.  Nothing crazy though.  Hard core sushi is not in the near future.

There's a bar here that is for Chiefs fans (say whaaaat) so I met my friends there and had some KC BBQ and watched the game last week (if you want to watch both the Chiefs and Seahawks at the same time, it was the place to be).  I think there were 9 total KC fans there, including us, but it was a small bar so we filled it plus a few people in Seahawks gear.  Best part?  They have Boulevard beer, which is difficult to find here, so I was one happy football fan.  I'm in it for the snacks, beer, and conversations, like any die hard fan would be.  One of my current goals is to track down some not-outrageously-priced Seahawks gear so that I can fit in around here.

In another effort to fit in (aside from finally getting my WA plates-YIPPEE), I also ordered some sweet hiking shoes that arrived and fit.  Bonus.  I haven't gone on any new hikes yet, but I have a few locations I'd like to check out.

Apparently this is the nicest summer Seattle has had in 20 years or something.  It's still in the low 80s and sunny and everyone tells me to just wait.  It will get rainy. My shoes are waterproof though, so it's all good.

So there you have it.  Just everyday life happening over here in the Pacific Northwest.