I’m still alive! February 14, 2007

I’ve been asked if I’m still among the living and yes, it’s true.  I am still alive.  In fact, when I read this comment inquiring as to my state of aliveness, I really thought it hadn’t been that long since I’d posted.  I see that it has been two weeks.  Yikes!

We got a helluva lot of snow in the last couple of days.  Last night, around 11:30, my husband and I were standing outside on the back porch smoking a cigarette and admiring the bright silence, and a coyote came trotting down the middle of the street.  That was a little weird.

I guess I’ve just been crazy busy.  My semester started a couple of weeks ago, and that always throws me for a loop.  But I’ll get back into the swing of blogging, eventually.  I’m getting a new, smaller and more powerful laptop in the next couple of days, and I’ll probably blog a whole lot just to have an excuse to play with it!

I had my last class with the special ed kids I was teaching.  I had planned on writing funny and amusing little stories about my experiences with them, but truthfully, there wasn’t much amusing about working with these kids.  Whenever I’d leave their classroom, I’d be filled with an odd mixture of total sadness and also hope.  Their lives are hard.  I don’t think I’d be learning much either if I were subjected to some of the things these kids are being subjected to in their home lives.  It’s not fair, and there’s nothing I can do about it, or even say to them to make them feel better or desire to learn.  It sucks.

My bilingual kids were a delight, because 1. they aren’t 14, they’re 11, which is a much more fun age to teach.  I know it doesn’t seem like a big difference, but there’s a lot more to those particular three years than you might think.  Maybe you know that already, and 2. they really really really wanted to learn how to read, write and speak English.  They were polite and sweet and I’m going to miss them.

Anyway, I am alive, and I’ll be back in usual form soon.

Happy Valentine’s Day!