What Is True Love?

True love is when he brings home New Moon from Redbox.

True love is when he splits a mango chicken salad with me at Costa Vida, even though he'd rather have his own giant beef burrito, because he knows I love that salad and can't eat the whole thing by myself.

True love is when he goes shopping with me and waits patiently while I try on a million pairs of shoes and then tells me I look beautiful in all of them.

True love is when he picks me up from the junior high every single day and greets me with a smile and a kiss.

True love is when we go to the gym on Wednesday night at 7:55, and there's only one treadmill left with a TV screen, and even though there's a basketball game on, he lets me have it so I can watch American Idol.

True love is when he makes me dinner - pork chops, sweet potatoes and a green salad.

True love is when he rubs my feet while we watch Titanic.

The End Is Near

This Friday, March 26th is the end of my student teaching. It has been such an enjoyable experience in so many ways. At the same time, it's also been difficult and tiring.

I recently had all my students evaluate my teaching, saying both good and bad things. Here are some of my favorites:

GOOD

You are hilarious!

You are always really happy and positive.

You interact with us so well on a personal level.

I love how you get to know the students so they're not just things.

You try to make the lessons fun, even when they're boring.

You teach in a way that helps me remember it.

You don't make me nervous to speak in French.

BAD

You never wear your hair up.

Your handwriting is too small.

You are a little spazzy.

You talk too fast.

You never have pizza/donut/ice cream parties.

We don't play enough games.

We don't take enough naps.

I love all 200 of my students. Even the ones who would rather nap than memorize French vocabulary words.

I formed a small choir of about 16 kids and I'm teaching them a French song that they can sing at the BYU Language Fair in mid-April. It's a slow, emotional, romantic number called "Dirait-On" (which means "So They Say"). It's a beautiful song and I am absolutely floored that the students are so musically capable. I'll be leading the song and counting out the rhythm and motioning for the tenors and basses to come in and one boy will say, "No, Madame Lee, you're not counting right. We need to come in earlier. That's an eighth rest, not a quarter rest." Wow. Okay.

I have begun the delightful process of searching for a teaching job in this poopy economy. I've had one interview so far and hopefully I'll have several more. Russ and I will be moving to Salt Lake sometime this summer, so I am looking for a school as far north as Syracuse and as far south as Provo.

I am so delighted to have a Spring Break this year. I haven't had one in five years. Unfortunately, I will be spending April 5-9 working at the bowling alley and looking for a job and creating a Teacher Work Sample and training for my summer job, but through all of that I'll have a song in my heart and a jaunt in my step because there's NO SCHOOL! Take that BYU.

Speaking of BYU...I am graduating in a month. I can't believe I'm old enough to do that. I ordered my cap and gown as well as 200 invitations, a keychain and souvenir tassel, and of course a stole of gratitude. Okay, I'm joking about everything but the cap and gown, which I only ordered because it was mandatory. I was dying of laughter when I read the size options. It said "Check one of the above: 1) 400-500 pounds, 2) 300-400 pounds, or 3) under 200 pounds." Seriously?

Virtue and Moir

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are hands down, for me, the best thing to happen to the Olympics this year. Their performance last night was stunning and moving and beautiful. It was the most romantic moment I've ever seen. On or off ice. Kudos to Canada for winning the gold on this one. They completely deserved it.

Long-Lost Engagement Pictures

Found these on my dad's laptop today. They make me smile.

Summer Job, English Snob

I got a job! I'll be spending this summer as a teacher for the Institute of Reading Development. I will teach reading to kids from first to eleventh grade at different locations in Salt Lake, Ogden, West Jordan, Bountiful, and Murray. They reimburse me for gas. I'll teach two five-week sessions and they're sending me to California in April for in-person training. I start in May and finish in August. After hearing from so many graduated friends about how ruthless the world is and how difficult it is to find work, it feels really good and reassuring to know that I'll have a good job after I graduate in two months. TWO MONTHS! I'm thrilled to have found a job where I can teach reading skills and strategies and hopefully instill a love of books in young people.

Here's something hilarious. Last week, Russell was up late trying to peer review some papers for his English class. People had to pick a controversial topic. I decided to help Russ review them and I picked up a paper and the title said, "Why ban the Gentle bread of pit Bulls? Then Why not Kittens as well." This kid's chief argument was: "I love Pit bulls and I know they'd never purposefuly try to hurt any one. They have never tryed to hurt any people without being provoked. It's their Owners fault if Pit Bulls are vicious animalls. People who target pit Bulls are miss-taken." Perfect title, seriously flawed argument, atrocious writing, and such a joy to make fun of.

I am an English snob. It's the one thing I do well and I consider grammar blunders a source of humor. Especially when they are made in a public setting (See my earlier post on Cake Wrecks). I also love this website, which highlights the general public's tendency to erroneously surround words with quotations in order to create emphasis. WHY do people do this? How is it possible to confuse it's and its? Or there and their and they're? How can people write the sentence I made three pie's and feel okay about themselves? I'll never understand. Ever. On the other hand, I'll never understand economics or politics or the motivation behind watching an entire four-hour football game. Everybody's got different strengths and interests, and it's a good thing. Skills I wish had made it into my list of strengths: basketball, making crafty things, holding my breath underwater, and dancing like they do on Step Up 2: The Streets.

Glad Tidings

Russ and I got called to teach Primary (CTR 6B, to be exact) in our ward. Yesterday was our first time and it was a treat.
We just barely got the manual and didn't have any time to prepare a lesson, so Russ and I had them take turns saying their name, their favorite food, their favorite animal, and their favorite scripture story.
One redhead boy was restless and poking his neighbors until Russ looked at him and said, "What about you? What's your favorite food? You look like a corndog eater." The little boy clapped his hand over his mouth in shock and looked astounded that Russ had guessed that. "You're right, I LOVE corndogs! How did you know?"
One girl with curly brown hair and wide blue eyes said, "My name's Cara and my favorite animal is a horse and I can whinny like one too and my favorite scripture story is when Ammon cuts all those guys' arms off because it fills my soul with glad tidings."
A treat indeed. I love this calling already.

Thoughts On A Friday Night

Today is Friday and I had the day off. It was Professional Development Day at the junior high and since I am by no means a professional, I was not invited to attend. I've had a great day. I slept in, went swimming at the gym, organized our bedroom, cleaned our bathroom, did laundry, wrote a unit test for my French 1 classes, and went to dinner with Russell at Macaroni Grill. The best part? Tomorrow is Saturday!

I had so much fun at dinner with Russell. I always have fun with him. It's hard to believe that we have been married already for a year and a half. I can't remember what life was like without him. I feel like I've known him for a long, long time.

My brother Daniel is making chocolate chip cookies as I sit here blogging and waiting on the world to change. He just said to me, "It's weird to think that in a way, there's sort of an unborn hen in this cookie dough." Who thinks about things like that? Like how many chicks actually get snuffed out so we get eggs that are full of yolk instead of hen?

Here's a hilarious book I just read that I would recommend: Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The perspective (through the eyes of a 9-year-old) is unique and the writing is fresh and original. I've never read anything quite like it. I loved it.

Here's another book that I recently read that I would not recommend: Nicholas Sparks' The Choice. I loved A Walk to Remember and was expecting a story of that same caliber. Sadly, this book did not measure up. It was nerdy and sappy and utterly predictable. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl has a boring predictable boyfriend and must make a choice to be with the adventurous, risk-taking boy instead. Then they get in a car accident and girl goes into coma for 3 months. Boy makes a choice not to pull her plug, girl luckily wakes up and all's well that ends well. Really, Nicholas?

In my spare time, I've been working a lot of shifts at the BYU bowling alley. It's a nice, easy job to have, sitting on a stool and spraying shoes and cranking tunes. Last week, however, was not so nice. Some guy told me something was wrong with his lane. I went over to him and told him not to bowl while I walked down to the back to fix it. I was walking in the gutter and halfway down the lane and what do you think he did? He bowled. And it was fast. And it went in the gutter. And it was stopped by my heel. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life and I wanted to march over to him and punch him in the gut and yell at him for not only being a poor listener but also a crappy bowler and to get out and never come back. Instead, I hid in the back for a while, writhing in pain. To get back at him, I never fixed his lane and I managed to hobble to another exit and sneak out and hide in the bathroom until he went away. The fool.

I'm going to go enjoy those cookies now. Over and out.