Bonsai!

Recently, I have discovered the joy of different themes on the background of my webmail. This lead to the discovery of a fun background with characters that do different things depending on what time it is. And the fox is trimming a bonsai tree as we speak. Or I write. How exciting my life is.

In other news, I'll be traveling back to the Grove this weekend for Homecoming! Yay! I am so excited to see good friends and go back to an atmosphere I've found myself missing these past few months. Pray for safe travels, please. I'll be carpooling, but it's still a 3-hour drive to "the meeting place."

In other news, I was observed twice last week! Contractually, we are supposed to be observed 8 times per year (four "rated", four "non-rated") by members of the administration and our curriculum supervisor (mine is the head of the world languages division and used to be a German teacher). However, we're apparently not supposed to be observed back-to-back as I was. Either way, I have two non-rated observations over with! Whew! Now I need to focus on my classroom management and warm-ups at the beginning of class.

And, I'm a genius! I went to Wal-Mart this afternoon and bought four binders - one for each level of French. I'll be making a "phantom student" for each class collecting all my tests, quizzes, handouts, etc. so next year, I have everything in order and I won't have to write up too many new things or search frantically for something I'm trying to find. Yay!

Whew! That was a lot of uninteresting goings-on here, especially since I hadn't written in so long, but there's my life for pretty much the past few weeks. Bleh.

Also, tonight for dinner - BLT. Yum.

Purpose

Being a teacher, I think about objectives a lot. In lesson plans there's a "teacher jargon": TSWBAT. This stands for "the student will be able to..." and following it, the objective and goal of the lesson should be stated.

As students of the Bible, what should we be able to do?

God outlines his entire objective for our lives through his Word; and, on occasion, we discover something more specifically applicable to our lives at a particular point, the objective of the lesson (instead of the unit or even course). I was touched today through an email from a friend which had the following verse in it. If there was ever something so encouraging yet direct and giving purpose to our lives, I don't know what that was. Being bogged down by the stress of my first few weeks of teaching, I had forgotten to focus on that which is above and what God has in store for me and wants me to do! What a meaningful and great wake-up!

"I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I make you to be a covenant for the people,
A light for the nations,
To open the eyes that are blind,
To free captives from prison,
And to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness."
-Isaiah 42:6-7

Speed Limits

So while on a small roadtrip to visit family this weekend, I passed a few of these signs and imagining how they enforce the speed limit via airplane did amuse and entertain me for a good fifteen minutes.