May you find what you’re seeking wherever you roam

Well, I’ve been in Ireland nearly a week now.  So instead of giving you a bunch of boring paragraphs, I thought I’d give the “run down,” so to speak.

Wednesday March 25: My flight at RDU was supposed to leave right on time.  Actually, it only left 10 minutes late because of taxing on the runway.  But I tell you, it was the first time I’d been on a plane where the pilot was all excited because we were actually ready to go at the right time.  Yee-haw!  We arrived in Newark around7ish I suppose.  I ate dinner at a diner in the airport and then went to sit and wait for my flight to board at 9.  I discovered I had an audiobook of Pride and Prejudice on my ipod I had forgotten about and so it helped me pass the time away.  I was wearing my ASU sweatshirt, and wouldn’t you know one of the flight attendants on the plane had a son who goes there!  She was super nice the whole way and even let me put my bookbag in the flight attendants’ closet because there was no space in the overhead (I was in a bulkhead seat so I couldn’t put it at my feet).   I had taken a Tylenol PM in the airport and as soon as we had taken off, I made myself comfortable and promptly fell asleep.

Thursday March 26: I slept the whole night (woke up only once when they were serving dinner, which I opted not to eat) and woke when they brought out breakfast.  It wasn’t much, but I had coffee to keep me awake.  I spent the last hour of the flight watching Casablanca in the personal TVs that Continental puts on their planes (awesome, btw).  I didn’t finish it, but hey, I’ve seen it 3.4 million times.  I landed without a hitch in Dublin and got throught customs quickly.  I got lucky because they customs room filled as soon as I had gotten in line–I would have been there forever!  I got my bags, again easy, and went to ask some info about the bus I was to take to meet my host sisters.  As it turned out, there was a a bus coming at 10:00 am (which we hadn’t known about) and I took it straight into Shankill, where my family lives.  Because I was there an hour earlier than we had planned, I had to drag two suitcases into a pub (yes, there was one open at 10:30 in the morning!) and call my family.   What a sight I must have been to the barman and the old drunk (yes, again, Ireland) man on the stool!  I called Karen and she and Aly came straight away to meet me.  It was only a short walk back to our house.  They showed me to my room and I started unpacking (yes, Mom, first thing, believe it or not!).  I skyped my mom and took a short nap and spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know the girls and Kathy (James was still out of town at a conference).  First full meal in Ireland: pasta!

Friday March 27: I slept in to overcome the jetlag and spent the rest of the day hanging out at the house resting.  I watched a little TV and didn’t do much, until everyone got home around four.  We went shopping for dinner and bought…pizza.  You know I was happy! The family I’m staying with is simply lovely!  We’ve gotten on very well and they are so helpful.  They help me run errands, point me in the right direction, and invite me where ever they are going.  I love them and feel soo fortunate staying here.  I love their daughters, Karen and Aly (16 and 13) and we’ve gotten along so well.  I feel like their older sister!

Saturday March 28: I went into Dublin with James and Kathy via the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit…basically, the subway above ground) around 10 that morning.   The city is fantastic.  I can’t really compare it to any city in the US, but it’s the perfect blend of the modern and the old.  The Georgian architeture is beautiful! At the Dublin Vistor center, I met up with the other American students in the area.  We spend the day exploring the city and taking pictures of everything from St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Liffey.   It was brilliant.  We ate dinner that night at a pub and watched the first half of the Ireland v. Bulgaria qualifying game for the World Cup, before taking the DART back home. That night, I watched The Boy in Stripped Pyjamas with the family.  Talk about a beautifully depressing movie.  Needless to say, I’m reading the book now.

Sunday March 29: I slept in a bit late and didn’t get to go to church as I had hoped.  Instead, I lunched with my family and then headed out to where Rachel, the other girl from ASU, is living–Killiney.  We spent the day hiking Killiney hill (passing Bono’s house as we did so!) and then walked into Dalkey.  I have to think we walked a good several miles.  I was exhausted, but it was amazing! The views here are absoluetly gorgeous!

Monday March 30: Monday was my first day at All Saint’s National School (oh yeah, I am here to student teach, aren’t I?).  The school is TINY! There are about 50 students in total, ranging in ages from 4-12.  It’s not a one room school house, but it’s almost.  In the mornings I work with 4-7 year olds, 8-10 year olds in the early afternoon, and 11-12 year olds in the late afternoon.  Next week (after Easter) my schedule will change a bit.  It’s sooooooooo different from high school.  There is one little girl I absoluetly love already, and I can’t wait to keep working with the rest of them.  I may prefer secondary, but it’s such an amazing experience in every other way, that it’s ok. Afterschool I couldn’t figure out how to work the key to our house (lame, I know), so I walked around Shankill and explored for 20 minutes or so until I came back home to find Karen there.  Again, it was a bit of a lazy day hanging out with the family, but I like it that way.  Dinner: Irish Breakfast….mmmmm

Tuesday March 31: Today was much the same as Monday.  Nancy, the little girl I love, gave me a sweet card she had made.  I really like all of the other teachers at the school.  There’s also another student teacher from Spain who is great! She doesn’t speak English very well, but she’s super nice.  Afterschool, I got in the house by myself (James had to teach me how to use the key again! haha!) and watched 24 with Karen before planning for my first lesson tomorrow.  I’m teaching the American Revolution to 5th and 6th class (11-12 year olds).  I have NO idea how it’s going to go, mostly because I have NO idea how to teach that age, but I’m excited.  It’s wonderful that I’m going to be able to teach what I love, but still make it relevant to these kids (it spurned an Irish Revolution in 1798).  Well that’s it so far–I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Be on the lookout for a blog tomorrow, including pictures, that I’m posting afterschool.  You can hold me to it!

I’m having a great time and I appreciate the thoughts and prayers I know are coming my way!!

Well, I will be on the road (sky?) in just a few short hours.  I hope that y’all will keep coming back and reading, as I hope to be posting several times a week while I’m there (if I’m not having too much fun, that is.)  Just some last minute thoughts before I fly out:

1) My suitcase and other bags (a bookbag and a carryon) weigh more than I do.  Not even joking.

2)My first experience in Ireland is to find my way home from the airport all by myself.  I have to figure out which bus I have to take to a bar where I will then be picked up by two teenagers to walk home.  Good times.

3) An arctic cold front in coming into Ireland today.  Gotta love the far northern hemisphere.

4) I’m uber excited.  All this said, I can’t believe that the time has finally come.  It’s still very unreal to me at this point.  My plane leaves at 5ish this evening and I’m still just kinda hanging out at the house soaking up paint fumes and in my bedroom shoes.  But I have a picture of my host family in my head and I’m jumping out of my skin, on the inside. 

The next time I’ll be posting, I’ll be across the big pond! If you want my skype, comment and I’ll email it to you.  Until then, May the road rise up to meet you!

Well I’m leaving in just 17 short days and I feel like I have SO much to do before I go!  Not even just packing and making sure I am mentally prepared for a 6 week voyage across the pond, but also finishing my student teaching here in the good ol’ US of A!  There are times when I feel so overwhelmed that I am distancing myself from the massive chaos.  Sometimes it seems easier to avoid the problem then actually sit down and grade those essays (which I HAVE to finish for tomorrow or my kids will hunt me down).

However, God is completely aware of my situation and sent me to church this morning to hear this message: SLOW DOWN!  Ok, well that’s only part of it.  What I really heard from Him is, “Chill out, Rebecca.  I know that you have a ton of work to do and you need to do it, don’t procrastinate and be lazy, but you need to do all of your work for me.”  Yep, grade papers as if grading for the Lord and not for my students.  Being lazy does not show glory to God, but getting all of my work done–and doing it with the right attitude–does. It’s hard for me to hear that right now because it would be sooo much easier if I could forget about North Carolina for the next 17 days and just prepare for Dublin.  It’s what I would rather do.  But I have not been in God’s word like I should be and I’ve forgotten why I am doing what I’m doing.  I am not teaching for myself or for the money (I think that no one can argue that).  I can’t even delude myself that most or any of my students actually care about history.  What’s important is that I show them that I care for them.  With all of the baggage some of these kids have, they need the love from someone.  Maybe I’m not the best person, but it’s what I am there for.  I only hope that I can counsel them in a spiritual way and direct them in a path that will allow them to succeed in life.  And maybe the ones that don’t know Christ will see Him in me.  But I can’t do that if I drop off the planet and don’t for those relationships for the next 17 days.  That’s not a lot of time I have left with them.

So in summation: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as if working for the LORD and not for men.  (Colossians 3:23)

Apparently, BBC says that most people have only read six of these.   But here’s the deal, I don’t have super much time to read anymore, so I need a key for this:

X-I’ve read it

XX-I’ve read most of it

XXX-It’s sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read

I’m also going to highlight them in green it stands out more.  I would also make a mark to say that I have a desire to read it, but that would take too long.

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen X
2) The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien X
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte XXX
4) Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X
5) To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6) The Bible XX
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte XXX
8 ) Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9) His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11) Little Women – Louisa M Alcott XX
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare XX
15) Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien X
17) Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger X (Unfortunately, this is true)
19) The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch – George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell X
22) The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald X
23) Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams X
26) Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carol
30) The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis XX
34) Emma – Jane Austen XXX
35) Persuasion – Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis X
37) The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39) Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne XXX
41) Animal Farm – George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown X
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45) The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery X
47) Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50) Atonement – Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52) Dune – Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X
55) A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens XX
58) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck X
62) Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas X
66) On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick – Herman Melville XX (Not even worth it)
71) Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72) Dracula – Bram Stoker X
73) The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74) Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses – James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal – Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession – AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens  X (Many, many times, it’s a special favorite)
82) Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web – EB White X
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom X
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X (Again, a special favorite)
90) The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94) Watership Down – Richard Adams XX (It’s really not that good)
95) A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas X
98) Hamlet – William Shakespeare X
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X
100) Les Miserables – Victor Hugo X
So that’s 24 read, 7 mostly read, and 4 waiting to read.  I feel quite well read.