Back to School!

Hello all! I am currently doing field experience in a high school, and it is going well so far. I've only been at it for three days, but I've already learned a lot about the technical aspects of teaching such as how to take attendance and create seating charts using the online program the school uses, how to keep track of papers when you have five different classes, and how to enter grades into the gradebook. I've even had a chance to grade some papers too! I'll be doing this for the next two weeks, and then it will be back to Central. Classes start on the 25th. All my classes are in the education department, except for one philosophy class.

Over the summer I worked with the City of Redmond at a day camp. It was a lot of fun and really hands on because the two other counselors and I had to plan all the games and all the activities for every day of camp, except for field trip days that were planned months in advance by the camp director.

Other than work, Jay and I managed to have some adventures on weekends. One weekend we decided to do a little spontaneous car-camping trip. We packed up some sleeping bags, food, water, extra clothes, and drove out to the peninsula to see some beaches. We left on a Saturday morning and made it to the beach by about 2 in the afternoon. The weather was stormy all the way there, but as we got closer to the coast the sun started peaking out. By the time we got to Ruby Beach (North of Beach 2), the weather was perfect!

 We spent a couple hours exploring the beach, climbing on rocks, and inspecting barnacles and anemones in tide pools. Jay had never seen these things (they don't have tide pools in Ohio, I guess. Weird.), so it was really fun to show him how the barnacles stick their little legs out to grab food in the shallow pools, and how the anemones fold in on themselves to prevent from drying out during low tide. We found some limpets and starfish attached to the rocks too!

At about four in the afternoon, Jay decided he wanted to see Mt St Helens. So we left the beach and drove all the way to Mt St Helens. We got to the Johnston Ridge lookout point at about 8 at night, which was perfect timing to watch the sun go down while we got attacked by killer mosquitoes. We drove back down the mountain after that, looking for a forest service road or logging road to pull off on to spend a night in the car. After much searching (and almost running over a slow-moving porcupine), we finally found an old logging road.

 I did not sleep well, mainly because I was paranoid that a park ranger was going to find us and then we'd be in trouble. The whole Mt St Helens area is closed for restoration so I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to be where we were on that logging road. So we woke up at five the next morning and planned our route home. We decided to drive through the Mt Rainier park on the way home.

We made it to the park around eight in the morning, which is the perfect time for a hike on the Naches Loop trail! I think it was around three miles. It wasn't too hot out yet, or too crowded, but we passed a ton of people on our way back to the car.

 After that, we headed home and made it to the couch just in time for naptime and 1 o'clock!

Jay and I flew out to Chicago the last weekend of August. One of his best friends got married on August 31st. Jay and I explored the city a little before taking the train out to the suburbs where the wedding was. Jay was in the wedding, so he got all dressed up and looked pretty snazzy!

 Other than that, I spent a lot of the summer working and relaxing. I watched my brother graduate from Skyline in June! No pictures of him, but I do have a picture of the cupcakes I made him (before they were melted in the car).