Last weekend Chad and I had the chance to meet several famous people - politicians, movie starts, and singers, at an event in D.C. (on of the perks of living in such a big city). Here are some pictures:
We actually met all these famous people at the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum in D.C. - they were on display. Yep, all of the pictures above (and below) are of us with wax figurines. Chad and I couldn't believe how real they looked! It was a little creepy. Chad had to poke one in the eye just to make sure he wasn't real and wasn't going to start talking to him. The museum lets you touch and take pictures of everything, which made it a lot of fun. In some of the areas they have jackets you can put on to make you look more like the figurines (a fur coat near the Kennedy family and a generals jacket in the war section). They had wax figurines of politicians, athletes, movie stars, signers, politicians, war generals, news anchors, etc.
In case you weren't able to make sense of the lengthy and highly punctuated title of this blog post, this post will be the first in a 3 part series about the things that happen in life. Today, in Part 1, I will be writing about the tragic 3 alarm fire that destroyed much of Takoma Educational Center -- the school I work at. Although this fire was a tragedy and we are all very nervous about what the repercussions are going to be (they have already said we will not be reporting back to Takoma after the break but instead they will be trying to determine where we can go instead) what is most important is that NOBODY was hurt. This is a blessing; thank heavens school was not in session, things really could have been much worse.
Yesterday afternoon I noticed I had one missed call and a voice message from my school. I thought it was strange that they would be calling staff over the two week winter break. I listened to the message from my principal and learned that there was a major fire at our school. Throughout the day, I learned more from the news and updates on the Washington Post website, and by making a couple phone calls to other teachers that were in D.C. and watched the action in person.
To sum it all up, there was major fire damage on the third floor of the school (where my classroom and teacher preparation room is) and the second floor was destroyed. As luck would have it, the fire on the third floor happened to be right where my classroom is - or used to be. Although everything that was in my classroom is gone, it is not yet certain if everything in my cabinet in my teacher prep room is destroyed. The head custodian at my school said that whatever the fire didn't get, the water from the 'over 150 firefighters' did...so I am keeping my hopes in check but I am clinging to the hope that I can salvage some of my stuff. Since I bike in to work, I keep an entire warbdrobe at school, not to mention my own personal LCD projector and lots of other possessions. In the case that everything is gone, I have started to make a list of everything that I had at svchool for insurance purposes and I was surprised at how much I had there.
Crazy how you only usually read about these things and then the universe lines up and points at you and suddenly it is your school you are watching on the news! What is most important, by far, is that nobody was hurt. No kids were even in the building, thank goodness! Anyways, life happens.
These are links to news articles about the fire at my school and video and pictures of it all:
We got some snow here in D.C. today. It was the first real snow of the season (it snowed a tiny bit already but it never stuck until today). It hadn't snowed when I rode in to work this morning but starting at around 10:00 am the snow started coming down and it didn't stop for several hours. So that means I got to ride home in a couple inches of snow. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I rode in this morning, and I was actually really looking forward to seeing what it would be like. So, the verdict on biking in the snow is that it is beautiful and challenging, but not more than I can handle. It took me about an extra 25 minutes I think to get home so I would probably expect to need an extra 40 minutes to get there. This makes for a pretty long commute! Luckily, there should be less days with real snow on the trail than days without it. Winters in D.C. do not typically get all that many inches of snow (except for when there is a Snowpocalypse). So anyways, here are some pictures of the beautiful winter wonderland in D.C's Rock Creek Park where I get to bike through to and from work.
Being a teacher is a very challenging job for so many reasons, and sometimes it seems like I'm not making a big enough difference. Luckily, there are always those days when I see the difference I am making, even if only for a few students. Today was one of those days. I have a student in my class who started the year not knowing how to recognize, write, or say the sounds of any letters of the alphabet (he should have learned all of this last year in kindergarten). When he would write stories at the beginning of the year, he could only draw pictures and occasionally put a letter or two on his paper, often not corresponding with any sounds he was trying to write. Today during writing he wrote a whole story about superman going to a store, getting some candy, and taking some money out of his pocket to give a the lady at the store before flying away. He spelled all the words the best he could by sounding them out and didn't get discouraged when he didn't know how to spell something (previously a big road block and still a big road block for many students). For example, his story started like this: "Frst subrmn wnt to the str. Vn he gt cand..." (First, superman went to the store. Then he got candy...) I was so proud of his progress. Another girl in my class started the year as a good writer. She was writing stories that were 3-4 sentences long, but didn't have very much detail. Today she wrote a chapter book. It is 8 pages so far and she told me she still needs to write chapter 3. Awesome! I hope I can help the rest of my students make this much progress as well.
Yesterday I went out with the missionaries for a few hours, one of them happened to be my brother Andrew. It is always a lot of fun to spend time with the missionaries, but it was especially fun to get to spend time with my brother! This is a picture of us with a lady we visited.
