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

One of the best weekends

While some people may disagree, or agree, or not care either way, I think that this past weekend was one of the best weekends that I have had in a long time. To be completely honest, the people I spent the weekend with might not even agree. But that's fine. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fridays are always so good. They are the first day I get to see Lucas in awhile and I always look forward to them so much. The never disappoint. This one was no different. We went on one of the best dates that we've had in awhile. We started out the evening going to Fat Guy's Burger Bar. This is a small restaurant on Greenwood in downtown Tulsa.

Personally, I thought it was delicious. Mostly cause I love hamburgers. And partly because I don't get to be with my boyfriend very often so I like everything I do when I'm with him. I had a double cheeseburger with BBQ sauce and lettuce. Yum. He had a double bacon cheeseburger with mayo and jalapenos. I'm 99% sure that's what he had. But it was delicious.

Then we walked to the Center of the Universe. This is also downtown. The walking there was just as much fun as being there. I just love being with him. But anyways. Most websites define this place as a sonic anomally. It's really cool. You stand in the middle of a circle and you can hear yourself echoing. Unless you are the one standing in the middle of the circle, you can't hear it. So it was really neat to play around there for a while. Here we are in the center of the universe.

Then we drove around for awhile trying to decide what to do. Eventually we ended up at Halloween Express. It was fun to look around here at all the different costumes. Then we went to the Cheesecake Factory. We had a ten dollar gift card so we decided to go use it on some dessert. I love cheesecake. I had a lovely piece of white chocolate caramel macademia nut. He had dulce de leche. Yum. It was delicious.

That was the end of Friday. Saturday was pretty exciting as well. Sleeping in....always fantastic. And then I went to Lucas' house for some pumpkin carving/painting. Here are some of our creations.

Candi painted Elphaba from Wicked

Connie painted a pretty sweet tree scene.

Connie also carved a tree.

Me and Lucas carved a haunted castle/house thing.

Then it was Sunday. We had my mom's birthday get together and we played a game all afternoon. It was so much fun. I absolutely love spending time with my family and the game we played, "Dicecapades," was so much fun!

I think that's all.

-Kristina

5th Graders and 5k's

Last week was my last week with my fifth grade class. I was a lot more sad then I thought I would be. 3 hours, once a week, is not nearly enough. I'm so excited to be a teacher. It will be so amazing.

With that being said I want to tell you about my teacher moment I had in the classroom last week. I felt like such a teacher haha. One of my fifth graders, Libby, came up to me and said, "Ms. Kristina, I don't know how to write a summary." So I responded with, "Well, Libby, I've never read this story so I need you to tell me what happens in it." She took off, cause fifth graders love to talk, and told me a 5 minute overview of what happened in the story. Here, I cut her off and said, "Libby, what have you been doing for the past five minutes." Immediately her eyes lit up. "I've been summarizing!" So then I told her she just needed to write it down like she was telling someone the story who had never read it. It was really neat to me. I love teaching.

Since it was my last week, I have to move to 2nd graders next week. I'm slightly worried about this because I've never been with children that young in a classroom setting. I taught 2nd graders at church but that is so much different. Plus, going from 5th to 2nd is a huge change. Agh! I really just can't wait until I get my own class for a whole year!

Several months ago I posted my bucket list. I've been slowly working on things on it and this past weekend I ran my first 5k. I was so thrilled to be able to finish. I've been training for the past two months or so but I still wasn't sure I was ready. I finished in 31:19 so I was very happy with my time. Not bad for my first 5k that I didn't even think I could finish. haha. Here are some pics from the race.

Shanna, my sister, ran too.

Crossing the finish line!