Oh Xanga...did everyone forget you like I have?...

I just spent three hours learning a two-part, seventh grade level version of the song "Carwash"...
I'm not sure if I'm cut out for this choir director thing, but I really want to be. I think this week is going to be better. I'm going to make it better. Isn't that what a teacher does?

I love teaching. But for real job interviews and teaching 7-12 grade are a little intimidating to me at the moment. I love the kids...and that keeps me going. I kind of need to work on my mean side though. Probably a good thing to start, oh....three days ago  

I don't write too many Xanga updates these days, but I do still read other people's. It's good to be able to keep up with people I don't see much...I hope everyone is doing well!

Here are my official countdowns...
*35 days or 5 weeks from right now I will be a college graduate. (With a degree in music education, from Ouachita Baptist University, I might add...one of two who are graduating this May. (I'm not a weed!!))
*55 days until my birthday (The big 23...which I'm sure will be a lot different than the big 22....ha)
*51 days until I'm on my way to Europe, walking and exploring the very same areas where great musicians were centuries ago!! (All-expense paid I'll add...just a bonus, I suppose )

Who knew three years ago that I would be walking through Africa and the sands of the Sahara Desert in summer 2006, meeting unreached people of the Amazon River and walking through the Amazon jungle in summer 2007, Japan over Christmas break, and now exploring the streets of Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, Florence, and Paris in Europe during summer of 2008? It all seems so unreal to me, but so exciting!   Maybe one day I'll be serving the people of one of these continents I've been to!

75 days 'til graduation.

That's a little crazy. Five years has been a long time, but also just enough, I think.
75 days is like...the amount of time in some kind of free trial period...

Student teaching is going well. I love my kids. I like the teacher and the school I am working with. I've been working with elementary classes a lot. Kids have a lot of energy. A lot. I'm tired (and maybe getting kind of old...haha) But I love it.

I won a trip last week. Actually I got selected to go. I applied through the national branch of our honors fraternity for education majors, and they picked me. I had to tell where I wanted to go, why, how I would use it in my future classroom, how I would capture the experience through technological and non-technological resources, etc...They picked 20 people from the nation to go, so that's pretty crazy I guess. I'm a little (ok a LOT) excited! It's all-expense paid, and I selected Europe (specifically Austria, Italy, and France) because of the rich music history. I don't know yet when it will be/how many people will be on my trip/exactly where I'll be going, but we'll see! I guess that kind of makes me a world traveler...I just love it. Traveling is exciting to me, especially traveling for missions, but this will be an exciting opportunity too! Five continents in 2.5 years...who would've thought? (And I'm the girl whose parents never even let her go on a ski trip to Colorado with the youth group in high school...ha)

Friday night I randomly signed up to go with a group from campus on a moon-lit hike. It was pretty exciting too. Fantastic, to be exact. We hiked up a mountain about 30 minutes from campus and then hung out and explored at the top and made s'mores and hot chocolate. Hiking is one of the things on my to-do-before-graduation list, so yay - I get to check one off, and hopefully I'll get to go again sometime!

Hope everyone has a good week...