An Early Thanksgivings

With the upcoming Thanksgiving, I've decided to go a little bit early and tell a few things that I am thankful for. These are in no particular order.

1. The wonderful opportunity to attend a good school like TU at almost no charge to me. It's a great feeling to know that I will graduate with a very small amount of student loans.

2. Living in America. We have freedoms here that people in other countries would not even begin to dream about. I love that I am able to freely choose my religion, as well as smaller things, like the clothes that I wear.

3. I'm thankful that, at least here, women are allowed to wear pants.

4. My wonderful family. I absolutely love my family. I cannot even imagine where I would be if my family didn't support me and care for me in the way that they do.

5. My trumpet. And my guitar. And my voice...which is awful. I love music. Ever since I started band in 6th grade music has been something that I am extremely passionate about. I love listening to music, and, even more so, making music. The times that I am not doing one of those two things are few and far between. I think that when I am home alone, I sing 75% of the time. The other 25% I have my music blaring.

6. My friends. I don't have many. And the ones that I do have I am not incredibly close to. But friends are important. Very important.

7. Cereal. I wonder how many meals this semester I have replaced with cereal. Or ice cream. Haha. I'm very healthy.

8. My goal-oriented attitude. If there is something that I truly want to do, I will find a way to do it. This has gotten me many places in life.

9. My job. Well, my jobS. I really enjoy my coworkers at TU, and I even like working at Cracker Barrel. It's rough. But they are both jobs that I enjoy.

10. My ethnicity. Though it's not something I express often, I really enjoy being able to say that I am Native American. And no, it's not just for the money that they give me. It's a pride thing I guess. My great-grandma was 100% Cherokee so I just think it's neat. However, I know very little about the Cherokee culture. It's definitely something that I need to work on.

11. Children. Being able to be an elementary teacher is something that I am ridiculously excited for. I love being with them. My second graders are even growing on me.

While there are hundreds of other things that I am thankful for. I'm going to wrap it up with one last one.

12. My boyfriend. Not a day goes by where I don't fall even more in love with him. Him and I have been through so much and yet we still have such a strong relationship. Things are hard, with him being gone, but we have made it through almost another full semester of long distance without too many problems. And even though he's not here, I know that he would drop everything and be here as soon as I said I needed him to come home. I love you, Lucas.

-Kristina

PHEW!

What a crazy last week it has been. I've been so busy that I've hardly had time to breathe. The good news is, even though I hate to admit it, I'm starting to like my second graders a bit. This week I had a lot of fun with them. They just say the funniest things. Here are some examples:

Melissa: What's your name again?
Me: My name is Ms. Hickey?
Melissa: HICKEY?!?!
Me: (thinking oh my 2nd graders know what Hickeys are?...but then she finishes)
Melissa: That sounds so much like hiccup!!


Me: Khalid, what are you drawing?
Khalid: Um...well....well...um...my momma says I'm real creative.


Teacher: Jeremiah can you measure your pencil is?
Jeremiah: It's 6 and 3 lines.


Me: Sean, tell me about that story you are writing.
Sean: Well it's about a sun and his friend who is named wind. And they are best friends. And they do everything together.

I wish sometimes that I was still that young and my biggest worry was whether or not I got candy for reading my sight words correctly. Sigh. The ease of being 7.

Another thing that happened this week was my partner, Kaitlin, and I presented our final projects to the class. I had spent so much time working on this and I was so worried about how everything was going to go. I just want to say that I don't think it could have gone better. Everything went so smoothly. Let me tell you, it's difficult to write a 45 minute drama lesson, but we succeeded, and even had a little bit of fun with it. I think our biggest worry was that it wouldn't be long enough, and we were at 50 minutes when she cut us off, and we still had more stuff to do! Another worry was decoration, we didn't have decoration, and we were terrified that she would complain. But she didn't. She actually said she liked how we used the projector and videos as decoration. Which wasn't what we were going for...but it worked. So we'll take it.

Oh yea! Intramural soccer started this week. We're 2-0 right now so that's super exciting. The first game ended pretty dramatically with a shoot out. But we won. It was awesome! Then the second game the other team forfeited, but we still stuck around and scrimaged, so it was still fun.

So, like I said. I've had a crazy busy week. Now I'm just ready for the weekend and some much needed time with my boyfriend.

-Kristina