Is this a good activinmee?

I've officially been to all my classes, jobs and activities for this semester, so I'd better give an update before I forget.

Creative writing looks good. I think we're going to be reading some good things. We just finished The Tender Bar by JR Moehringer, which was excellent. What we write about has been very open, which is fine, but I don't mind doing writing exercises or getting topic suggestions because sometimes it's hard to get started. I wrote a piece last week that turned out pretty good (I might post it later), and I'm trying to decide what my 15-20 page portfolio assignment is going to be about. If it's good, I might make it a part of my senior project I have to work on next semester.

Brit Lit II isn't bad at all, except that our classroom is WAY to small for all of us. The teacher is very clear and fair, and the assignments look pretty doable. I can't wait to be done discussing Pride & Prejudice because I'm not really enjoying it, but the rest of the reading list looks fine.

Service Learning in the Latino Community is kind of a long class (almost 3 hours on Wednesday afternoons) but the topic is immigration so it should be interesting. The teacher is very gregarious (sometimes to the point of being rude, but not usually) and I have Danielle in my class. I'm doing the service learning portion of the class at Emerson School (right down the street!). After endless e-mails I got myself placed in the 6-8 grade Science classroom with a teacher that doesn't speak Spanish. Don't tell my teacher, because I just don't have time to find another assignment. But the teacher I'm working with is very sweet and nice, and it will be interesting to see a science class for a change.

I have the same teachers for Exploring Teaching this year, but one of them shaved his beard off and looks really weird. The class is about twice as big (which makes it a whopping 10 people), so we should have some new and interesting discussions this year. The only other person who was in the class last year is Amanda, who is an art ed. major who is super cool. I'm doing my classroom hours as a part of the AVID program at Richfield Middle School, which I started today. Today I just facilitated a study hall, but in the future I'll be doing study groups with the kids, oh excuse me, tutorials. For now they're short-staffed and disorganized, so the pressure is off me.

Oh, and I dropped Public Speaking because having a night class twice a week makes it difficult to do much homework for the next day. I might take it next semester, I might not.

Nannying for baby Paloma has been good so far. She's five months old, so she's a little more entertaining than an eat, sleep, poop baby (though she does that, too). She really likes jumping in her little jumpy contraption and listening to me sing Raffi songs (she likes "5 green and speckled frogs" the best). She is teething, though, so every so often she wakes up screaming bloody murder. But apart from that she never cries. I do that on Fridays and every other Monday.

I start Core Team at church this week, which means I lead a group of middle schoolers. Natalie, who I nannied for this summer, is not in my group but she is signed up for In Touch. Hayden and Carla from the retreat this summer are in my group though, plus a few kids I don't know. I'm excited!

Okay, I'm going to write my Brit Lit paper tonight so I can do nothing tomorrow night.