And A Hush Fell Over the Crowd!

I am still learning; I still struggle with parts of my job; I still am positive I made the right choice taking this position and moving here.

Just a fairly quick post about a few successful moments that help me feel like I'm doing more that keeping my head above water.  There is a little girl who I have been reading with (or who has been reading to me) the past few days.  Yesterday she told me that reading with me "is fun" and wanted to know if she could read with me everyday.  Even when I correct her pronunciation, or ask her to go back and read a whole paragraph again she smiles at me and agrees!  I am humbled when she looks up at me with a happy, quizzical look in her eye and asks "Did I say that word right?"

Today at the after school program one of the students asked if we could just have five minutes of quiet time at the beginning of the homework period.  I responded to her request, and spontaneously announced that from now on the first five minutes of homework time would be done in silence and if the students needed help or had a question they were to raise their hands and one of the three staff would come as quickly as possible.  To my astonishment, all 15 of them zipped their lips and got right to homework.  A few instantaneously raised their hands for help and wiggled them in the air until we got a chance to go to them, but at least it's a start.  I am hoping it will work from here on out.  When the students left I felt calm and relaxed instead of trying to get my head to stop spinning like I have every other day thus far.

One of my FAVORITES of us!

For whatever reason during the past week I have had a wave of homesick-ness wash over me.  Besides really missing the #23 at Oscar's Very Mexican Food I miss the so many little things about home.  The everyday antics of my sister; how she and I would simultaneously go from watching the 3:30 Jeopardy! episode to doing homework to napping to cooking dinner to heading down the street to Rubicon; being silly and having the same sense of humor and laughing at the same things at the same time and having people think we were leaving them out of a joke!

In front of BnN's, a fav coffee shop

I miss living five blocks from one of my best friends.  Especially because I am convinced after he helped me learn/patiently tried to teach me how to play chess my brain grew and now I think it's turning back into mush! Aside from that though I have been remembering times where there were no questions asked, I was just allowed to say how I felt about life and I had a cheerleader by my side.  I didn't have to explain when I was kidding or feel embarrassed or unrealistic (not even a little bit!) when talking about my desire for a full, vibrant, amazing life that I want to create.

I miss having my family close by.  Driving down for Friday lunches with Dad;  meeting up for lunch with Mom.    Having the option to take a quick drive to see my cuzs and get into some sort of trouble with them.  ;)   I miss the California coast line.  I have to thank the universe for giving me such great kids to be working with, because without their little smudged, hopeful, red-cheeked, tear-streaked, grinning, shining, inquisitive faces I would not be ok with missing home like I do.  But I do work with them, so, it is ok.