School's starting soon!

Alas, my summer is almost over! I will be going back to the classroom to teach English in just a few days. I decided to sleep in today for one of the last times.

Now, there's no way I am complaining about my schedule. I'm not. Teachers who complain are just... well, we have it good. I realize that. But, the job is unique too, and there are many people who wouldn't last a day trying to teach a classroom of junior highers or high schoolers. So, to each his own. I've chosen teaching and I love it. The summer breaks are a good perk too, although I think I am ready to get back into the swing of a schedule.

Over the last week I have been going to school to work on my room since I have a new placement here in Ohio. One day a student worker in the tech department left me this office sculpture on the left. Pretty funny...

 I think I am pretty much ready. This year I haven't done too much in the decorating sense because a lot of my stuff is still stored in our Pack Rat container from moving. (As soon as we close on the house, I'll be able to get it delivered and unload my classroom stuff.) So I am missing some of that. What I did do is create trees with those big rolls of bulletin board paper by crunching it up and then taping it to the wall. Then I used fun colors for the leaves. I have several trees around the room and its kinda Dr. Seuss- like. Plus, of course I always have my graffiti-style welcome banner up in the middle of the wall. I even have purple curtains at the windows. For not having all of my regular stuff with me, I think the room looks pretty good.

Back to school night is tonight, so I hope that I get to meet a lot of parents and make some good connections. I still need to work on some of my lesson planning for the first unit, but I think I am going to do that from home.

Moving on to a different subject, all the contractor bids are finally in, and the appraisal has been ordered. Though it isn't officially scheduled yet, at least we are on the right track. The loan officer sent us 30 or so pages of documents to sign that starts all of the financial process. It's crazy how much a loan costs you over the life of all the payments.... it's like double what you actually pay for the house! That's why we are going to be paying extra on all of our payments- so we can save on interest. And our home is even really reasonable too- I don't know how people stretch themselves to get some of these really expensive houses. It's a bit overwhelming, but I am still confident that owning is better than renting!!