EARTHQUAKE!

A 5.6 earthquake shook San Jose while I was at Bible study tonight! It was the longest one I have felt in a long time. The chandelier was swinging and the pictures on the wall moved a tiny bit, but nothing else.

I was at school for 14 hours yesterday, but today I had "healthy play" training and so I had a sub. Happy almost Halloween! (I keep forgetting that it is tomorrow since my school is celebrating on Friday.)

Hallowed & Bethlehem

I will tell you about some of the events that I have been busy with through church:

Hallowed (if you are confused by this description, just skip to the next paragraph):

Tonight there is an event called Hallowed. It's kind of hard to explain, but it will be a night of music and art with the theme of "sanctuary" that is an outreach in Downtown San Jose. The building is an old dilapidated youth center that I love because I love old buildings that are falling apart. On Tuesday we painted two little rooms and installed lights and doorbells and such and last night we brought in furniture and decorations. The people are going to enter the first room, which is all black with a black light. On the wall is written, "have you ever felt lonely? If so, write your name." and they write their name with yellow highlighter (which is really fun, I think). The idea is that everybody has lonliness. On another wall, it says "if you are alone, push this button." So they push it, and it is a doorbell and we are inside another room that is decorated like a living room with Happy Birthday stuff and we sing happy birthday to them (we know their name because someone on the outside greets them with a wireless mic) and they blow out the candle on a cake. The idea is that sanctuary is a place where you are accepted, like a birthday party. It's a little complicated, and I'm excited to see what happens tonight.

My college/career group is in charge of just one room -- there are lots of different groups involved in this event.

Bethlehem

Each year, my church does an event called "Bethlehem" where they turn our church parking lot into Bethelehem. It looks amazing. go to: www.bethlehemsc.com. Our church isn't that big, so I'm amazed at the size of this production. This was the first day of construction and I went to help from 9-2. Everything is in big trailers all year in pieces so they just have to put it all together (I say "just," but it is an enormous task.) I had the job of shoveling dirt to fill in around where they recently poured concrete. My arms are jello now. It was so good to be working with people, to be doing something physical, and to be outside. I thought a lot about family work days... building fences and roofs and gardens. It was funny to me that a guy my age had never shoveled before, because I think I have done a fair share of shoveling in my life. I think the day would have been more perfect if Cindy had been there calling for cookie breaks every so often. :)

So if you want to come visit me sometime, you should come December 6-10 and see the Bethlehem performance. I think I'm going to either be a greeter or in the marketplace. I hope I'm in the marketplace. Sounds more fun.

Reality Check

I forgot.

I came to school today going through the motions of teaching, reminding a student for the fourth time that he really needs to bring his book back from home. I forgot that some students don't have a home.

I stayed after school for three hours with a crying mom and her two kids, one of which is in my class. She got kicked out of her friend's house, where she was staying. It's raining outside. I hope they are okay.

I forgot to smile today, to welcome my students into a classroom that is theirs.

Learning About Ancestors

Most my students are 1st or 2nd generation Americans. It was fun to see where everyone's families came from! Look at the map we made:I thought this picture was cute. Every week we have an estimation jar and one person is assigned to count the objects. You can tell he is one of my lower math students because he didn't group the sticks. Very colorful, though!

Moss Landing

Yesterday was perfect. My mom and dad are staying at a bed-and-breakfast for their anniversary and they invited me to join them for the day in Moss Landing. It was a beautiful day of much-needed time outdoors and with my family.

Their bed-and-breakfast was the cutest thing ever. There were old boats everywhere -- the deck was an old boat, the planter was an old boat, the bed was on top of an old boat!

First we kayaked in the Elkhorn Slough.

Info for Mom and Dad from Wikipedia:
In the western U.S., a slough is a secondary channel of a river delta or a narrow channel in a shallow salt-water marsh, usually flushed by the tide. While this is in essence the same application of the term as used in the eastern U.S., a singular difference is that there exist no native trees in the west that would grow out into the waterway to form a swamp, such as the Elkhorn Slough. An estuary is a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea.
So who was right?

It was amazing! Otters (who have 1 million hairs per square inch on their body) played all around us and we could hear and see them cracking open shells with rocks. An enormous sea lion swam near us. Harbor seals were everywhere (one was zooming through the water like a speedboat). I felt like I was watching a Discovery Channel special on ocean wildlife, except it was all right there!

My mom tried to convince me that our kayak would not tip over. I was enjoying watching some pelicans, and next thing I know, my kayak is upside down and I am in the water (luckily with a wetsuit on -- no such luck for my dad). He says it was his fault, but I really don't know what happened. All I know is there was a harbor seal that was definitely laughing at us.

We ate lunch in Monterey at Bubba Gump's and ate lots of shrimp. Then we drove back to Moss Landing and took a walk on the beach. I have never loved the beach so much. It was like seeing home after a long time away from it. We took a nice walk and then explored (got lost, imho) the area around Moss Landing, which I think is so strange because there is farmland right next to the ocean. It's like Bakersfield meets Morro Bay. We watched sunset on the Salinas River. We ate clam chowder at Phil's Fish Market and then watched the stars from their room.

Overall, a lovely lovely day.

Stinky

I heard of an experiment where you put a bean in a wet paper towel and then it will sprout. My class tried it, and it worked, but it was the smelliest thing ever! All the kids had their noses in their shirts as they were trying to write a 10-sentence description of their germinated bean. Hahaha.

Vocabulary word of the day: Autumn

It is October which means I'm allowed to drink spiced cider. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Here are some pictures from my classroom that I took today:

















The fast plants are making seed pods, but the fire marshal came by today and said I had to turn the lights off at night, so we'll see how they suffer.

Math Monkeys

It's so interesting to see the kids on the laps of their parents during conferences. They are so small. When they're in class, they don't seem as young or small to me because I only compare them with each other.

Lori gave me magnetic monkeys a while back. I'm so glad the principal didn't walk by during math today because I had kids throwing monkeys at the white board to demonstrate word problems. :) All the kids were paying attention!

I'm Back!

Hope you all found your way back to this blog.

I went mini-golfing last night and now I'm tired!

Parent/teacher conferences weren't what I had been dreading. I just showed them some of their kids' stuff and told them a few things they needed to do at home.