Where did September go???

Hello all!

I am going to try to use this blog as more than just a blog for my travels.

A brief update about me--After my Europe travels, I returned to Philly and it took me 4 days for me to feel like myself again! Wow!!! I worked at PSD for 1 week to sub for a teacher who went to Puerto Rico. After I worked 1 week, I went to Gally to take a class on teaching ASL to Deaf Students. There is a lot of information out there for teaching ASL as a first language, right??? WRONG!!!! This guy, Todd Czubek is trying to develop a curriculum for teaching ASL to Deaf students, so I took that class. It was very good, although a bit too much for my work with preschoolers! :) I took off to the Midwest after my class ended on Friday to attend Cookie's 30th birthday party. I stayed in the midwest (Wisconsin/Illinois) for a month before returning home. What did I do for a month??? A lot!!! Cookie's 30th Birthday, Great America, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin State Fair, Biking along Lake Michigan, 4 club Deaf Picnic in Wisconsin, Visiting different Chicago Landmarks with Cookie, Harry Potter exhibit, Dad's home, Illinois State Fair, and visited ISD.

I have already gone back to work. Although I had a great summer, I was a bit happy to return to work and to stability in my life! I am currently working with a new team teacher, new aides and new room. I have a good feeling about this year. I am already on a good start with my team and my team teacher is a GREAT person to work with. She takes my jokes well! :) She says she will get me back, but we will see about that! :)

I have 7 students as of today, will get a 8th one soon. I had three of my current students last year, so it is good to see how much they have grown since they started with me last year, two were from my team teacher last year, and they are doing very well. One of the two had serious behavior problems last year, and since the first week of school, I have not put her in time out so that is GOOD!!! :) Two are "new" to PSD although they came to the 2 year old Playgroup class so they have some basic knowledge of school rules, etc. I am going to get a 8th student probably within the next week and I am NERVOUS about this one because she had a lung transplant when she was a baby and I am TERRIFIED something will happen when she is under my care. Good thing the nurse office is just across the hall from my classroom so I can run to her if I need to. The nurse says she is healthy right now, and only takes medicine to prevent rejection of her lung, but who knows what will happen.

I am very busy with the Miss Deaf Pennsylvania Pageant committee. We are planning for our pageant to happen on January 10th at PSD. We have been selling lottery tickets, so if I have not asked you to buy one yet, I will soon! :) We realllly need the money since we are starting from stratch. It is a pain in the ass to sell them but hopefully we will get some money from this. I hosted a poker tournament last weekend and we got some money from that as well so it helps a bit.

I went to Connecticut for one night on September 26th. When I got to Conn, Tammy and I took off in her car to Big E which is a "state fair" for the New England States in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was good to be back in Massachusetts. I would LOVE to live here, but the cost of living is a bit high. After the fair, which was PACKED, Tammy and I met with another friend of ours, Cenea who lives in Mass and works at the Walden School for dinner. It was good to see her and catch up. We drove back to Conn that night (its only 1 hour away) and I returned home on Sunday. We have today off from work because it is Yom Kippur.

I am going to fly to Chicago on Oct 9th for the weekend to see Abby's Improv performance. Dad will be coming here during the 4th weekend of October to attend his 40th class reunion at Gally. I will be going with him to DC for the weekend. We got a hotel room so I am excited about that! :) The last weekend of October, I will be meeting up with my girls in Ohio. I CANT WAIT for that one!!!!! yahooooooo :) and that is also... HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!

Til next time! :)