Four day weekend :)

So we had a long weekend, like a really long weekend. When school got out on Friday I knew that I didn’t have to teach until Wednesday. Now those are the types of weekends I like. Saturday we didn’t do much of anything, I mean we rested and rested some more. Saturday night we watched movies…Marla was feeling sick so we stayed up in the apartment while everyone else watched over the hedge…and we watched Terminal and then when they were done with over the hedge we watched that. So we were up until like 2. On Sunday I was totally in the mood to do nothing, skype was acting up so I wasn’t able to talk to my parents, so we typed messages to each other on instant messenger. The rest of the day Marla and I watched hours of the first season of LOST. I actually didn’t start out watching that show with Marla and Becky at the beginning of the school year…but as most TV shows do…it just sucked me in. I don’t like everything that happens in that show…but then again it was just a lazy Sunday and yeah it was something to do.
Monday was parent teacher conferences…and as it always happens that parents that I needed to see didn’t come. But those that I didn’t really need to see came. Which really makes me upset…most of these parents don’t seem to care a hoot about their kids until the grades come out and then they are all up in arms about the smallest little thing…I had one parent (she does actually care about the grades…a little too much in my opinion) who got at me cause her daughter had an A- in reading and oh my goodness we can’t have that…now can we? I wish they used the system of E = excellent, S = satisfactory….and so on, but no we actually have to have REAL grades…even though it so doesn’t matter. On Monday afternoon we watched LOST again and finished the 1st season that evening…after our evening parent teacher conferences.
Tuesday: I thought that we were in for another boring day. Breaks are nice…but sometimes they get long when you aren’t doing anything. After I took a shower Rusty dropped by to tell us that they were going out to an island that was near the ruins (that we went to like 2 months ago) to go fishing, surfing, and snorkeling and wanted to know if any of us felt like going. I decided that it sounded pretty fun, more fun then sitting around the apartment for another day. So I talked Marla into going and then we got ready to go…and then waited for the boys to get back from taking the first boat down to the boat ramp 10 minutes away. Now most of the girls that were going (actually all but Marla, Allie, and I) wanted to go and sunbathe because there was a beach on that island and I guess that they want skin cancer later in life. But I wasn’t going to sunbathe…cause I can’t stand the thought of it…I really dislike lying out on hot sand in the hot sun for several hours just so I can get evenly burned…I would rather get burned doing something active like snorkeling…which was why I was there….to explore the water and look for interesting things and perhaps meet up with another reef shark.
So it takes about an hour by boat to get out there, and we had a lot of fun bouncing around in the boats. Mikey was our boat driver and we raced the waves…and as we got closer to our destination the boys started commenting on the surf that looked really big…I was wondering how many of them would be wearing battle scares by the end of the day…but I pushed that out of my mind and continued just watching the sea and the sky…there was rain up ahead and I was hoping that it would go away by the time we got there. Well when we got there all the guys started to laugh…and I couldn’t help laughing too. The beach was gone, cause it was high tide and well it simply disappeared…oh it would reappear in several hours just to hide again in the surf…but I mean I didn’t really mind…I like being in the water more then sitting on a hot beach…so I really didn’t care…besides with the tide coming in…that meant I wouldn’t get swept out to sea…I would just get pushed into the island…more exercise for me. Mr. B decided to drop all of us off at the next island…the waves were closer and he would be able to keep an eye on us better…so that was a good thing I guess. Marla and I first adventured into the choppy waves and I discovered that the water was very murky…that made Marla not want to go in any further…there were other reasons too. I wanted to explore, but wanted a swimming buddy. So I found Gene and we found a nicer spot to climb in and went out…first we went out without fins and realized that fins were definitely needed if you didn’t want to slam back into the shore. Everything looked very dead and not so nice when we swam out a second time…where was the stupid reef…that is what I wanted to know…Pushing against the current and the waves and giving Gene a few swimming tips…we battled our way out to the three large rocks that were just out of reach most of the time…like when a wave came our way. But that was when the transformation hit…we had been swimming over sand, which then turned into fire coral…which then turned into the most beautiful looking reef that I had seen in a while…bright colors were jumping up at you and there were more fish then you could count just everywhere…and then it dropped off into pretty sand and deep murky looking water. I was so happy to see the coral and how beautiful it looked that I decided that we had to tell the others on the shore…who had just given up and weren’t going to come out any further…that meant that I had to get Gene’s attention. He had climbed up on a rock and I had to shout to him from the other side. For some reason he thought that something happened to my mask and snorkel and wanted to give me his…but once I made him understand what I wanted to do…he said that we should go back and see what if anyone else wanted to come back out with us…I lead…since well I swim pretty fast sometimes and I just rode the waves back to the shore…I told the others and then decided to eat a protein bar…they really weren’t all that bad…kinda chalky but this one had chocolate and peanut butter on it…so really how can they go wrong. Well while we ate I noticed that I had a cut on my leg…I decided that I would wait for that to stop bleeding before we went back in. While we waited Gene and I talked about different things and stood in the water while waves crashed in carrying with it broken hunks of coral and shells. Not the smartest thing to do…stand where there are hundreds of pieces of carol being thrown at you every minute…Now it wasn’t long before a large hunk of coral found my foot and sliced it up pretty good. I was not happy...I wanted to go back out and I was still on the shore because I was waiting for the other cut to stop bleeding, now I had more cuts, which meant we had to wait longer…Gene and I moved to another location on the beach and waited for my foot to stop bleeding. I almost felt like yelling “What is the matter with you? Did you not beat me up enough in the surf the first time I went out? Did ya really have to dump all that coral on my foot while I was just standing on this coral covered beach? Huh? Did ya?” But the ocean will be…well the ocean…you can’t tame it and it definitely will not listen to you. No matter how much you scream at it. So once my foot stopped bleeding we headed back out…this time it took a really long time to get even close to the rocks cause we were tired of battling the waves and when we did get close to it, we had to turn back cause it was time to go. Which was a real shame…but I knew that we didn’t want to get stuck out in the ocean in the dark without a flashlight…it is interesting enough with a flashlight…it was going to be extremely frightening without one if we didn’t get back to the shore in time. But we did get back in time, which was a good thing…
All in all I enjoyed my day, today I am very very sore…I feel like I just swam in a triathlon…(I do know what that feels like…done it before)…my class wasn’t really all that awful…we still have problems with listening…but then what group of kids doesn’t? If you have ever worked at camp then you know what I am talking about. During recess I love catching my kids and holding them tight and telling them that I have caught a big one…and if they are ticklish I will tickle them until they are really laughing and then I will let them run off and play some more. Today McRon was chasing after Danielle and he thought that he could get by me without me noticing…But I just leaned forward and scooped him up…I was like “Oh I caught a McRon…and he can’t get away…were you chasing Danielle? Were you?” between giggles he told me that he wasn’t and asked if he could be let go…I told him that he could if he said the magic word…there was a pause and he squeaked out, “Please!” That boy is just adorable…
My friends at southern have been trying to get me to draw cartoons for the school accent…cause the cartoons there are um…well not that great…and it doesn’t take an art major to see that. My friends have been telling me to do this for like the last two years…but well I didn’t actually consider it until last year…when the really good cartoonists graduated. But since I am a teacher and teachers are supposed to juggle many things…I have decided to give it a try. So I have been sketching a lot and I have created a little character and he is really cute…right now he is having several misfortunes with snorkeling…I find it easier to draw about things that I know about or have experienced…I find it funnier then reading a cartoon that is about the lines at KR’s or the lines at the café…yes they may be long…but 52 comic strips about lines is a little much.