For those of you who might be interested in hearing about and seeing pictures from my fabulous road trip of the century, I'm sorry. You'll be disappointed probably indefinitely.

I'm a teacher now, which apparently means I do nothing but teacher stuff, even though I have yet to receive a paycheck, though I've been pretty intensely involved with this stuff since the end of May.

In other news, my piece of crap car has some issues which, according to one mechanic, will cost over $1,000 to fix (if you're wondering, that's about a fourth of my car's total value). I have no money (since I haven't been paid in several months), I can get only about a thousand dollars on trade-in for it due to some other issues, and I'm about to start driving daily into a pretty sketchy part of town while hoping that my car holds it together enough to get me back out. I'm drowning in pre-teaching work, I have no friends, and I have no desire to work. Mostly I just want to cry.

It's worth it, right? Right?

The good part of my day: It's National Cheesecake Day and this is how I celebrated.

Half-price Cheesecake Factory pina colada cheesecake.

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.



Today is Tuesday, though it's actually more like a Friday since we have the day off tomorrow for the 4th of July. God Bless America.

My drive to do just about anything today is non-existent. It's 8:51 pm now and all I've done in the last few hours is watch The Bachelorette (totally worth my time) and spend lots of time on facebook (not worth my time). I need to work out, but I'm having a hard time doing it. I actually got all my workout clothes together about 20 minutes ago and got halfway through changing when I get distracted by my computer. Again.

The one great thing about working out here is that they have TV on the treadmills. Best idea ever. I was so pumped to go watch The Bachelorette last night while I ran and I got there and they didn't have ABC. I'm not even kidding. They had all the other networks plus most cable channels plus like fifteen different Spanish channels. No ABC. I was so mad that I really almost got off the treadmill and went home. I ate a cookie sandwich yesterday afternoon, though, that left me feeling pretty hefty so I pushed through my anger and watched Hell's Kitchen instead. Not nearly as exciting, but it got me through my workout at least.

That reminds me. I should probably check the TV listings before I go so I know what I want to watch while I'm running.

Maybe I'll make it to the gym by 9:30. Here's hoping.