New School Year!!!

Yesterday my school year officially started when I visited the elementary school where I'll be doing my inclusion practicum for my master's degree. I am working in a 3rd grade classroom with 18 wonderful students. I helped them prepare for a get to know you game they were going to play today. I am even more excited now that I've met the students. It's going to be a stupendous year!

My Summer

I consider my summer actually starting in April when I used my passport for the first time and flew to Mexico to visit my sister. She was teaching English in Tehuacan, Puebla, and I hadn't seen her for about a year and a half, so my mom and I met in Atlanta and flew to Mexico City to meet my sister. We then spent 3.5 hours on a bus, finally arriving at my sister's apartment at about midnight. We spent three days in her little town, visiting the town hall, the HUGE outdoor market, the Official Domestication of Corn Museum (that's "corn", mom, not "porn"), and eating wonderfully fresh mexican food. We spent a day visiting the ruins at Teotihuacan, and then took a bus tour of Mexico City. It was an amazing trip!!!!

In May and June I was lucky enough to take group voice lessons from a former BYU Young Embassador. She was extremely helpful in helping me learn how to improve my voice, and I am lucky enough to be starting private lessons with her in September.

At the end of July I finished and submitted my Master's thesis and presented my research at my school's annual poster session. I received a perfect score on both my thesis and poster. Yahoo!!!!

My summer ended with a quit trip to Virginia to relax post-thesis. I was able to visit with the family I assisted before I moved to Massachusetts, play with my sister while she was home for 6 weeks, and help my mom out while she was in a cast and restricted to using a wheelchair and walker to get around (she broke her leg at the end of June, requiring surgery to plate and screw her bones back together). It was a fabulous and refreshing trip.