I am so overwhelmed by all that I have to blog about; thus, I have chosen to put it off as much as possible. The obvious choice.

For now, I will post about a few things that happened a while ago.

As previously mentioned, I spent five weeks of near-hell in the Phoenix area of Arizona. It is hot there. The heat wasn't the worst, though it was impossible to be outside without sweating. The training I went through there was extensive, intense, and just really not fun. There were good parts, of course, but as a whole, I was not sad to leave. Not even a little bit. In fact, this past week I had another training here in Indianapolis (oh yeah, I live in Indianapolis now) and every time anyone mentioned Insitute (that's what the Arizona training was called) I just got an overwhelming feeling of joy at not being there anymore.

Anyway, there were a few good things.

Good thing #1:

I love the Mesa temple. I only went once while I was there, but it was just what I needed. I hated the negative, pessimistic, complaining person I became at Institute and the temple was a great reminder of who I should and want to be.

Good thing #2:







At the high school I was assigned to we were divided into groups of about twelve people and were assigned an advisor who was in charge of supporting us professionally. We spent a lot of time together planning and preparing for our respective classes and I felt like we really became familial. (Is that a word? Like unto a family.) We laughed, danced, cried, complained, and talked together. Pretty much anything other than work. In this picture is (front clockwise) Claire, Devon (our advisor), Craig, Leigh (Craig's wife who was not actually in our group), Alexis, me, Amanda, Kelsey, and Vickie. We were missing Barry, Bryan, Anna, and Rebecca.

Good thing #3:

I have a picture of my students and I want to put that on here as number three, but turns out it's illegal to post pictures of a minor without consent. So...this picture with my co-teachers will have to do. Rebecca, Amanda, Craig, and I co-taught our ninth grade literacy seminar class with Fernando Hurtado as our faculy advisor. The four of us were never teaching at the same time, but we coordinated extensively for our class of nineteen fabulous ninth-graders. After hearing some serious horror stories about clashes within collabs (that's what our group of four is called), I was so, so grateful for how effortless and seamless our collaboration was. Adding Fernando, who was the most encouraging and supportive advisor ever, to the mix made for a really solid team. On top of that, we had a group of really fun, well-behaved, and bright students. Teaching was definitely the best part of Insitute.