where in the world.... irish road trip

It's Wednesday and that means it's time the lovely Jess over at Classy in Philadelphia's , Where In The World Wednesday!

If you participate, please take the button the fabulousFeris made to use in your post!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world...it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

this week in honor the the crazy irish adventure college roomie and i did last year when she came to visit me. i'm using a few of my favs from the trip.

on top of blarney castle

galway

on the road in connemara

starting out the trip - cliffs of moher

so if you are participating go over to Jess's blog - Classy in Philadelphia and share your link :)

sunday update

another weekend has gone by... and they go by waay to fast! i hate how fast sunday night sneaks up, but really before i know it it will be thursday night again. seriously does anyone else just feel the weeks flying by? like next week is february already! (which is going to be a fabulous month) but i still have another week of january to enjoy.

so things i have been up to the last week (because it seems like i only write on sunday anymore)

-it was midterms most of last week at school. so the kiddies had half days and we had the afternoon to grade. so far the 3.5 classes i have graded they did well or what was usual. so i was happy with that. and i also gave them a chance to grade me for the first half of the year and nothing really unexpected from that. they for the most part like my teaching style, though i could vary it more, i'm prepared, organized, know my history and they like my class. so it pretty much affirmed what i was thinking that they like my class and me. but gave me a few things to work on in the 2nd half of the year - try to do different things and make it more relavent to their everyday life. this week i have 2 days of exams and tomorrow i have a day to just get work done! i need to grade the essays for 1 class and finish up notes for the chapters i'm starting this week. so it will be nice to get a day to get stuff done. and then wednesday starts the 3rd marking period.

-skiing is still going well. i'm enjoying my afternoons on the mountains and getting to ski, though i spend most of my time standing on the mountain at the top of the practice gates while the kids ski down and then take the lift back up. but it is fun, they make me laugh. and they did well last week, with our top 4 boys being about 7 seconds apart from each other, so lots of internal competition.

-tuesday went to see leap year with erin. and while it was cute i was disappointed. just a few random bits about ireland in the movie made me kinda eehhh. like in the beginning going from wales to dingle when she was trying to get to cork... if you look at a map it just doesn't make sense! also dingle is one of my favorite places in ireland and nope, not filmed there. and they made western ireland look really backwards. now i know the bus schedule is miserable (believe me i used it a TON) and the train is almost non-existant and really bad. and i wish it was actually filmed in the dingle/tipp area since thats what they said. but it was filmed in connemara and wicklow which look totally different. and the scenery, well i was rather disappointed with the little they showed. ohhh well. besides the irish scenery part i enjoyed it. it was cute and predictable and i love my romantic comedies.

-faaabulous weekend. went to dinner with twin friday night. haven't seen her in a while, so we spent 3.5 hours talking about life, boys, the future, work, laughing about being 16, and everything. it was great and i can't wait to see her new place in penn when she moves in with her bf next week! annnd then last night i went out with m. my original plan was foiled by winter, so we drove around talking and then went to a great little brew-pub for dinner and stayed for a bit listening to the music and then headed out and i decided to take him on a little adventure where we made out in the backseat of my car... which made me feel like i was 16.. which is funny because i didn't do it when i was really 16. i've really enjoyed spending time with him and i can't wait for next weekend! and i'll work on getting a picture, which is funny, because i haven't taken any pictures, which for me is extremely rare. so i'll work on it.

-and i finally joined the 21st century and signed up for netflix. any movie suggestions? i'm pretty heavy on the romantic comedy side of things.. haha

-and the jets loss. it was a pretty crazy game. they started out strong, but couldn't hold it in the 2nd half. i give the jets a great run. they had a rookie qb and coach. and while even i though rexie was crazy when he said they would go all the way, they did surprise everyone by making it this far. and maybe i'll have a good team next year?

-and i'm sad. a year ago roomie and i were frolicking around ireland. and i was driving the best rental car ever and we were laughing and hugging history and also about to head off to spain. i miss going on euro adventures every month...

how was your weekend?

where in the world.... cobh, ireland

It's Wednesday and that means it's time the lovely Jess over at Classy in Philadelphia's , Where In The World Wednesday!

If you participate, please take the button the fabulousFeris made to use in your post!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world...it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

this week i chose one of my favorite places in ireland. cobh. it is a cute little town about 20 minutes from cork and is pretty famous (ok, well for irish emigration historians) as 2.5 million irish emigrated from cobh (also known as queenstown). also she was the last port of call for the titanic and the lusitania was sunk about 15 miles off the coast of cobh.

i love visiting cobh to just walk about and they have a pretty good museum on irish emigration there too.

with my bff annie moore yay for palm trees in ireland

the main street in cobh

looking down at the water from the cathedral

so if you are participating go over to Jess's blog - Classy in Philadelphia and share your link :)

fabulous

so many fabulous things going on right now :) and it was a very fun weekend!

the jets just had an amazing game and they will be playing the colts next weekend in the playoffs. it was a great and intense game with both sides playing well and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole game. so yay! next week is going to be a tough game!

i just booked my flight to kansas in february! we have a long weekend for president's day so i'm headed to kansas to see my friend patricia from the summer and it should be a fun weekend full of singing lots of t.swift and talking about glee, jersey shore and being awkward. plus i'll get to see a kansas basketball game while i'm there! yay!

i had a great day yesterday. i had a zta advisors meeting where i ran into a sister from my college chapter i hadn't seen since i was a freshman! and it was fun to learn more about advising and what i'll be helping out with.

and then i went mountain biking. with an amazing boy. we met about a month ago and since then we've just clicked. i've really enjoyed spending time with him and we've gone out to lunch, ice skating, skiing and mountain biking among other things. so totally different types of dates and it has just been soooo much fun. he's an engineer at a candy company, recently moved back to the area after some time away, loves being outside, coaches hockey, and we can talk for hours about anything. he called at 12.01 on new year's after meeting twice, and just makes me smile. he invited me to a formal charity ball in february (which i am sooo excited about) and i can't wait for the weekends because it means i get to see him.

and tomorrow is an in-service day, which should be a nice change of pace. then a regular day tuesday and then mid-term exams start wednesday and the students have half days. so the next week and a half should be interesting. tons of grading! i'm all caught up on my US2 class, but i have 60 amistad essay tests to grade and another 60 projects to grade and then midterms. yay!

how was everyone's weekend?

why i love my job

i've mentioned a lot how much i am loving my job. and most days i really enjoy teaching high school students. and this week has made me love my school and teaching and my students (well most of them). so my school has a pretty good media program and they televise the morning announcements and every morning between the warning bell and start of school they play a song over the loudspeaker and have some random phrase on the tv. usually the phrase is like wacky wednesday! or TGIF... well last week was the week of john mayer and it put me in a good mood and on tuesday they played "crazy game of poker" by OAR and hearing that just brought me back to freshman year of college. and to make the morning even better on the screen it said - GTL baby, gym. tanning. laundry. now for those of you unaware it was a line from jersey shore. and i burst out laughing when i saw this and then my students discussed the show during homeroom. soooo today it said - it's thursday which means jersey shore! and well i just laughed. and then during announcements they were reading something for ski and on accident they said mr. mylastname instead of miss. so of course my students called me mr. allll first period. but i also found it pretty amusing too, so i couldn't blame them.
and my juniors today both first period and later in the day remind me almost everyday why i love teaching. they are fun, are actively learning and are relatively problem free. unlike my sophomores... which are another whole story. my 9th period class welllll frustrated me beyond belief today and they reminded me that your average high school student is lazy and no matter how many times you stress accountability and practically give them the assignment they still won't do it and then give you some great excuses as to why it isn't done. buuuuut i love teaching despite the redic high schoolers sometimes.

and skiing is going well. our first meet was last night and my skiers did well. they placed ok and we didn't come in last, and they all individually skied well and now they are more ready for next week. and it was weird, but i really felt like a coach yesterday. i had the 3 new kids and we were inspecting the course and as i'm explaining the gates and the best ways to attack the course it hit me, i'm a coach. and then as i was at the top before their first run and walkie talking down to coach at the bottom discussing their runs and my skiers all asking me for advice :) so i'm loving getting to see students outside of class and also getting to coach and learning a lot more about skiing.

and in random news... so i've been listening to a lot of darius rucker. he ia country artist and has had some pretty popular songs recently - alright, it won't be like this for long and (my favorite right now) history in the making. sooo i was listening to something and they were talking about his recent success and they said something about hootie and the blowfish...

yea, darius = hootie.

and it wasn't until i heard him sing, i was like omggggg. how have i not realized this before. and apparently my mom knew it when i told her, so i felt kinda stupid that i didn't know.

so here is the song i've been in LOVE with - history in the making. (i can't embed it)

and the lyrics are just increddddible.

and it is almost the weekend. i'm looking forward to it and it should be fun :)

where in the world.... zion national park, utah

It's Wednesday and that means it's time the lovely Jess over at Classy in Philadelphia's , Where In The World Wednesday!

If you participate, please take the button the fabulous Feris made to use in your post!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world...it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

This week I've decided to go to one of my favorite places in the world and my favorite national park - ZION NATIONAL PARK. Most of you know of my love for national parks and i had a great trip in the summer of 2007 with my family out west where i was able to spend a few days at zion. i want to go back and do a few hikes and go in the canyons too.

uuuugh, i want to go back so bad!

so if you are participating go over to Jess's blog - Classy in Philadelphia and share your link :)

ummm...

so january 10th and i haven't written a proper post in a long time. but life has been pretty fabulous. there has been a lot going on and i'm not quite ready to write about it all yet, but the last month has been pretty awesome and i've been having a lot of fun.

so with school things are going super fab. this is the last week of the 2nd quarter. and it is pretty crazy, because next week is midterms so just getting in the final tests and projects before the end of the quarter. and last week was crazy trying to write mid-terms and get everything ready to be submitted to my department. but i'm still loving my classes and my students. and it is crazy how fast time is flying, we are already pretty much at halfway through the year! ski is also going well our first meet is this week so i'm excited to see how my skiers do! and also i've been sick and took my first sick day in about 4 years. i haven't called out for being sick/missed a college class since my junior year back in 2006. but it was a well deserved day and i slept pretty much all day.

i've been lucky to get to see some friends recently, last weekend went into nyc for the afternoon to meet my friend laura for lunch. we spent a few hours frolicking around little italy and just catching up on the last 2 years since we've seen each other. and my co-worker erin and i have gone out to dinner a few times, which is awesome, her and i can talk for hours!

and the jets! whooohoo! it's pretty exciting! especially for a while there didn't even think they would make the playoffs, but between their game last week against the bengals and their playoff performance yesterday it has been pretty cool :) next week we play the san diego chargers.

ummm, that is pretty much it. lots going on and i'm very happy :)

but this freezing cold weather and my cold can go away.

where in the world.... provincetown, massachusetts

It's Wednesday and that means it's time the lovely Jess over at Classy in Philadelphia's , Where In The World Wednesday!

If you participate, please take the button the fabulous Feris made to use in your post!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world...it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.

This week I've chosen Provincetown, Massachusetts.It is the northernmost tip of Cape Cod and my friends and I went camping there in the summer of 2008 for a weekend and had a blast!

pictures from top left - provincetown monument, on the beach with kaity, making our bonfire on the beach at night, one of the many lighthouses on the cape

so if you are participating go over to Jess's blog - Classy in Philadelphia and share your link!

goals

hope everyone had a fun new year's eve :)

i hung out with my friend erin and we drank cosmos and talked about school, boys and life for hours and just had a nice quiet night. but things are looking up for 2010, so i'm quite excited about that.

so it is time to set some goals for 2010.

-have a awesome rest of my first year teaching and get rehired next year

-hopefully work where i worked last summer or find a fun summer job

-trip with my 3 best friends from college

-continue traveling around the US

-move out on my own

- join a gym

-read 100 books

- scrapbook more

-save $20,000

-take a college class

-look for the best in every situation

-a relationship

-keep in better touch with friends

-get back to europe?

-edit thesis for publication

-be happy and love my life

so i have a lot i want to accomplish this year and hopefully i'll be able to do it.

and i was pretty accomplished last year looking back on my 2009 goals -

-be happy - i was pretty happy for most of 2009, it was a great year!

-work on a more healthy lifestyle - ehhh, i was good while in ireland, but the last few months could have been better

-enjoy my last 3 months in Ireland - my last 3 months were ridiculously amazing

-travel as much as possible - spain, all over ireland, italy, england, tons of road trips

-find a teaching job for September - and i am LOVING it

-find a fun summer job - i had an amazing summer teaching and leading and laughing

-start my 'big girl' life - pretty much, i have a job and bills so yes, but i feel once i move out

- keep in better touch with family and friends - pretty good, i email a lot and write letters sometimes

- become more crafty (knitting, scrapbooking) - fail

- continue reading history books - yup, and i keep buying more!

- edit thesis for journal publication - epic fail. i haven't touched my thesis since october 2008.

- save money - kinda, i have some saved up but not as much as i hoped.

2008 was pretty fabulous, 2009 is a year of endings and beginings. I'm getting a few more months in a country I love and then I'm starting my job search for both a fun summer and a teaching job starting in September, so who knows where I'll be next year? I'm ready for the adventure and crazyness that 2009 is about to bring.

i was pretty good this year, so hopefully i can continue on the accomplishing things path. 2010 is a year of living. of loving what i am doing both professionally and personally, and taking advantage of every opportunity. and having fun while doing it!

good luck to everyone on what they want to accomplish this year!