Don't worry I am still alive...

i have been in houston texas living at the university of houston for the last two and a half weeks. i am staying in a dorm called moody towers that makes my dorms at spu seem high class. luckily i do not spend much time in my room and wednesday marked the half way point of this summer institute that is better known as 'teacher boot camp' around here.

our schedule is insane. i am doing surprsingly well for the sleep deprivation that i am facing. the first night was the worst. after flying in the day after graduation i went to sleep and woke up at about the same time that i had gone to bed the night before because of the time change and some late night packing. i usually get about 4 or 5 hours. i have mastered nap taking on the ride home - by the way everywhere we go here we go in old fashined yellow school busses. to school, to social events, to the baseball game(i got to see the mariners vs. astros). i always think it makes it a little hard to assert authority over students who see us arrive at school on a big yellow school bus with our backbacks and matching bright blue lunch boxes!!!

so what I have been up to in all these hours of the day you may ask? Well i am officially Ms. Sullivan - i am a teacher! i was under the impression that the five weeks in houston would be pushing it to train us to become teachers, well it ended up being five days instead! after the fist week of classes we began to teach summer school. i was placed in a first grade bilingual class which is cool because half of the class doesn't understand what I am saying, so it makes it pretty easy to teach them. :) in all seriousness - i do really like them, they are very cute kids. and smart, they just need some practice to get past this language barrier! they definitely give me a run for my money with the behavior management.

when i am not teaching, i am in seesions learning so much! i have never been feed so much information before. i think we cover about 5 credits worth each day. luckily we don't have paper tests, but we are tested in the classroom everyday! we all stay up late working on our lesson plans and preparring for the next day. or sometimes i just sacrifice some sleep to be social too.

my roommate in the grand moody towers is pretty awesome. we are going to live together in nola too! her name is courtney and she is from salem too. salem, virgina that is. she just graduated from university of virgina majoring in enlgish and french and minoring in american goverment...she has a lot to teach me obviously. my pseudo-roommate here is tiffany she basically rocks. we have found a common love for woodchucks and a general dislike for houston. she is a little social butterfly and seems to know eeryone already. after missing induction she has helped me to have made some cool friends here, its too bad that half of them are going to other regions...hawaii, south lousiana, or staying here in houston.

i will try to update y'all (you like that?) more often so that these messages aren't quite so long to read...