It's Been a While

Hello everyone-my friends and family. I am so very sorry about taking so long to update the blog but it has been a difficult few weeks and I have been trying to formulate how I will write to you about my thoughts. Last post I had mentioned that life, as a student teacher, was not ideal and I was having a hard time discovering exactly what my role looks like. I would like to say that this week it got extremely better and all of my worries of being a student teacher have gone away but that wouldn’t be true. With this said, I have had so many reassurances from family, friends, and mentors in my life. They have told me that it’s normal to feel out of place during this student teaching experience. Knowing these reassurances has helped me get through the last two weeks without being super hard on myself with teaching.

I have officially taken over all of the sections of the 10^th graders, which is a total of 57 students. This coming up week two of the classes are finishing up with a chapter about transformations and the other class is taking a test on complex numbers and vectors. This week will only be four days because it is Field Day on Friday. Field Day is an event where all of the students are required to do a few track and field activities.

A few highlights from the last two weeks include eating out a handful of times. I went to this place called Abby’s with a coworker and another coworker’s daughter. The food at this restaurant is very westernized. I had a cheese and jalapeño quesadilla and masala cheese fries. It was a great greasy meal that was much appreciated to have something similar to American food. Last week on Friday I went to dinner with my friend Leslie at a very traditional southern Indian vegetarian restaurant called Tava’s. I can’t really remember what we got but other than it being amazingly tasty and spicy! Leslie lived in Thailand for two years so she didn’t think it was that spicy. This Friday night Karissa and I went to Pizza Corner and this pizza place looks very similar to Fudruckers or Abblebees meaning it has signs all over the walls with cleaver sayings. My favorite one was Stressed is “desserts” spelled backwards. I ended up getting something that is called a conizza, a pizza that is shaped like an ice cream cone. It was actually quite tasty.

An activity that I have done is go to a music preview of the choir, band, and orchestra that the high school students put on. About 30+ students left on a field trip to a nearby city to perform in churches and for different schools. They sang some gospel songs and also did a great Beatles mixture of songs. It is so weird to see a school singing about God and is constantly praying in meetings and assemblies. I actually love it but I know I won’t be as fortunate in the public schools of the USA. Anyways, another thing that I did was on Friday. I helped chaperone a movie night at the Elementary/Middle School. There were about 15 kids between the grades of Pre-K and 7^th. We watched this movie called The Groods, which was on okay movie but the best part was listening to the kids laughing really hard. I realized that I haven’t hung out with little kids in such a long time and I forget how much fun it is to spend time with them.

Karissa and I were invited to our neighbors for dinner to different times over the last two weeks. A couple weeks ago we went to Rudy and Hemma’s house for a traditional Swiss dinner. They have three children and a friend who just graduated from high school who is visiting them for a few months. It was great to have a homemade dinner and the next week (Saturday last night) we had another great homemade meal. This time we went to Nandini’s house and had traditional Southern Indian food and taught us how to cook idlys and chicken curry. We had an interesting dinner. But in all, it was full of laughter and conversation.

I have great news; I am half way done with student teaching experience and I will soon be back in Montana. My dad will be here in a little over two weeks. I am really looking forward to spending time with him here in India and sharing once again new experiences in another country with him. I believe I have said this before but we will be visiting lots of temples and eating lots of food. We will be down in the plains so I am looking forward to warm weather and getting off the mountain for a week or so.

The weather back in Montana has been record-breaking snow I here. I am super happy that I am not there to be freezing cold all the time. Another thing that has been going on back at home is that a lot of my friends are getting engaged and married. I would have to say that it is weird to see at least once a week for the last month that a friend got engaged. It really makes me think about what I want in life when it comes to a relationship and I have come to a conclusion that it doesn’t matter if I know or not. All that matters is that I do Christ’s work all throughout my life and never stop taking adventures!

Happy March everyone and I hope you have a great month! I know that this is my favorite month of the year because of Pi Day, my Birthday, and spring equinox. Until next time!