Living The Good Life

Dave and I had one amazing kick-off to summer vacation these past two weeks.  Once that last school bell had rang, we packed our bags and headed to Peru where we played around Lima, explored Cusco, and backpacked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.  That's right, I said backpacked .   Who would have believed that I, miss "I'd like to spend the whole day reading in a coffee shop", would strap on a 25 pound pack and climb some mountains over four days?  And when I say climb some mountains, I'm not kidding around.  We began the journey at 8,528 feet and reached our highest point at 13,776 feet at Abra de warmi wanusca, otherwise known as Dead Woman's Pass.  We hiked ten hour days, two of which were during a rain storm and over one section known as The Gringo Killer , and visited beautiful Inca Ruins along the 26 mile trail that was built by the Inca civilization. This is what is even more surprising...I loved every second of it.  The journey was amazing, difficult an...

Whew... I survived my first year of teaching overseas, which reminded me a lot of my very first year teaching.  Both of the years were filled with stress, confusion, many sleepless nights, and many new discoveries.    Actually, I think that this year of overseas teaching was more difficult than the first time I stepped into a classroom, fresh out of college and completely clueless.  That very first year there was a good reason for my confusion and countless mistakes, I didn't know teaching would be any different.  I didn't know that the many things that seemed impossible at the time, I would develop strategies to work through, that they would become easier.  Ignorance was in fact bliss.   I went into overseas teaching thinking I had some experience under my belt that would transfer over.  But nothing could really prepare me for the drastic changes teaching at a school that  only has 200 students for grades nursery to 12th grade.  Instead of preparing for one class, and having t...