I had a bit of anticipatory nerves/jitters last night before going to bed. As soon as I decided I was PREPARED and ready to go to bed, I had a huge burst of nervous energy. I ran around the house manically cleaning things and doing the dishes. Needless to say I didn’t get nearly as much sleep as I should have; I typically need a minimum of 9 hours to perform at my best, and instead, I got about 6.

Got to school an hour before students were supposed to show up, and tried to relax and get things even more prepared than they were before. Kids started showing up with their parents at 7:30am and there was a whirlwind of hand-shaking, seat-pointing, direction-giving, and trying to find places to put all of the school supplies students were bringing (I hadn’t thought of that before). LUCKILY… Hardly any of the kids actually brought school supplies, so that wasn’t a huge issue. By the way, my school is 100% free lunch (high poverty area), so the students eat breakfast in the classroom.

Did the day go as planned? NO! Absolutely not. But then again I guess that was part of the plan. Things I DID manage to do:

-Talk about the classroom rules and consequences
-Introduce myself
-Have the kids do a mini art project and introduce themselves to the class
-Teach some awesome call-and-response, more about this later

Is that good enough? Eh, I don’t know, but this is all about me improving and doing my best, which is what is undoubtedly happening.

The kids “oooohed” and “ahhhhed” at my photos of Oregon and Northern California, cried about weird things like their grandpas having died, congratulated and encouraged each other, and overall were pretty awesome. It wasn’t a disaster, and for the most part my behavior management went really well. I got LOTS of hugs. I memorized EVERY kid in my homeroom’s first and last name within the first 10 minutes of class. (The second class was harder.) I had a slight moment of panic when I discovered that one of my students doesn’t know all of his letters (i.e. he can’t read or write at all), but all I could think was: I’ll figure this out later, let’s get through today. My major behavior issue in the class (as of now) admitted to me that he is ADHD, but no, he doesn’t take his medication, because it makes him throw up. Me = frowny face.

My next steps: Diagnose the heck out of these kids and find out what their skills / strengths / weaknesses are, introduce them to all of the many little procedures they need to know for our classroom to run like a well-oiled machine if ever a substitute enters it, and jump into teaching content as quickly and SUCCESSFULLY as possible.

Yikes!

Yee-haw!

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

• The Appalachian mountains
• Hicks, rednecks, and hillbillies
• Religious zealots

When I got placed in Oklahoma (screams of excitement and horror, from both me and my family/friends), I did a lot more research, and determined that Oklahoma was like:

• Flat flaat flaaaaat
• Dry (except for green Tulsa!)
• Bible Belt
• Cherokee Indians
• Republicans
• Cowboy boots
• Southern accents

When I first got to Oklahoma City I wasn’t impressed. But after my first couple of days in Tulsa, I was super excited!! And the more time I’ve spent here, the more I LOVE this place and can’t imagine living anywhere else (for the time being). Here is what I’ve learned about Oklahoma (Tulsa) since living here:

• These people do not think they’re living in the South. Well guess what… I am from the Northwest… And ya’ll are definitely in the South.
• Very few people have Southern accents. But there is a lot of Southern jargon (ya’ll).
• It’s fucking hot as hell.
• It is super flat… There is one “mountain” called Turkey Mountain, and I can tell you right now that it is not a mountain – it is only 300 ft. above the river below it! However, the city is built on lots of rolling hills, so the streets aren’t actually dead flat.
• The food here is GREAT. All of it. There’s all kinds of food. And it’s great.
• The people here are so nice. Tulsa itself is pretty liberal (comparatively speaking) and progressive (again, comparatively). YES we are in the Bible Belt (there are 1000 churches in Tulsa) and YES the people here are typically Republican. But my favorite thing is that NOBODY here has bumper stickers on their cars! Nobody is rude or in-your-face about their beliefs or anybody else’s beliefs – at least not loudly or publicly (there is always the typical behind-the-scenes bashing and hating. You know)
• There is hardly any traffic, especially on the freeways.
• People SUCK at driving. Absolutely suck at it.
• The night life is alive and well, and in my opinion (the locals beg to differ), there is a lot to do around here.

I have acquired a sense of Oklahoma pride that I never felt in Portland. I loooove my Oregon fir trees, berries, coast, etc., but I never felt a deep sense of pride and belonging in Portland like I am already starting to feel here. Which is why I was so excited to get an Oklahoma license plate! (Yes, just one – you’re only supposed to have one on your car here!)

One last thing – the bugs here are HUGE and LOUD. Especially the cicadas, which I don’t like. The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are TINY and FAST. I have had sooo many mosquito bites just from walking from my car to my house! The birds are beautiful – so many more colors than Oregon birds!

One thing I heard a lot of complaints about was that you are always surrounded by people and activity and you can’t get away from it. Luckily for me, I was one of the few people in the dorms who had their own room, because I wrote on my disabilities accommodations form that I require a lot of sleep due to a psychiatric disorder. Also, luckily for me, I feel very comfortable eating dinner by myself and doing all of my work by myself. So once I got back from school, I did my own thing and didn’t talk to anyone unless I was waiting in a line.

I ended up getting to bed earlier than everyone I knew every single day (I still only got 5-6 hours of sleep), and I attribute this to 1) eating dinner and doing my work ALONE and 2) literally not spending a second on anything that I didn’t need to be doing, aside from the 15-30 minutes that I would take to call home (mostly my mom, who I called every day or twice a day), often while multi-tasking. Anything that required I divert my attention and time away from lesson planning gave me anxiety.

I won’t bore you with the details… There are many of them, and none of them are all that fun to read… But I will tell you the lowlights and highlights of my Institute experience. (You can figure out for yourself which ones were ‘low’ and which were ‘high.’)

My first student with ED (emotionally disturbed).
I was lucky enough to experience having a student in my class who is in the 1% when it comes to behavior management problems. He was a handful from the start – refusing to stay in his chair, not following directions, stealing, bringing water balloons into class – but as time went on things got out of control. One day he brought a turtle into school claiming that it was his pet. When I called his mom, she said she didn’t know anything about a pet turtle. He became very violent in class: he threw chairs, twisted my arm and shoved me, punched kids in the face, threw pencils at people, sprayed two kids in the face with sanitizing spray, lifted a chair above his head, there were lots of curses and threats out of his mouth. If you’re wondering how any of this could happen in a school – that’s a conversation I’m not going to make public on the Internet. My repeated requests for more help were ignored until it was proven that he was a danger to the other students (after he had been in class for 7 days).  I was relieved and incredibly sad to see him go, because although it was incredibly difficult to teach the other students while he was in our class, I could tell that he was incredibly smart and had potential if SOMEONE could reach him (and of course, I wanted to be that someone).

Betta that my student with emotional disturbance drew

My corps member adviser (CMA).
Let me start off by saying that by the end of the 1^st week, at least half of the girls in my school – if not three quarters of them – let’s just say about 50 girls – had a crush on my CMA. I would describe him as: Japanese Mexican, mysterious, stern, funny, sexy, innocent, and savvy. There was an awkward moment at the end of Institute when my CMA group and I went out to dinner, and when the topic of Institute crushes came up, I was the only one who admitted HE WAS MINE. Everyone else kept their damn mouths closed while I gave them the evil eye because I knew he was theirs also! But anyway. The point is that he was an incredible resource to have during training and I learned so much from him, which I am incredibly grateful for, especially after hearing horror stories about other CMA’s at Institute this summer.

My CMA Group

The Wobble.
The thing about Institute that made me the happiest and most proud was seeing every single person at my school ENTHUSIASTICALLY do the Wobble (see below). Never in my life have I seen so many people willing to dance around and embarrass themselves without having a drop of alcohol. It was such a wonderful thing to see and experience, and it’s not just the Wobble that I’m talking about, but all sorts of group activities and discussions and collaborations and EVERYTHING that I got to see!

My own strengths and weaknesses.
I’ll make this short and sweet: I am at the top when it comes to lesson planning, and I suck at behavior management. Additionally I am confident and have a strong presence in the classroom, but, my teacher voice is too quiet and could use some more enthusiasm.

I could really go on and on about this, because the experience felt a lot more like 5 months than 5 weeks, and I learned more than I ever have in my life and experienced better and worse things than I could have imagined. But writing a novel about it is kind of wasting my time!

As usual, I feel a little like a fish among birds (or whatever animals or plants you think are fitting), not just because I’m a weirdo, which I am, but because I’m one of the few people from the West Coast (most people here have never even been to the West Coast) AND one of the very very few people who majored in science in college, which I feel is a HUGE part of my identity. Being a SCIENCEY person, that is. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably not a science person, but don’t worry about it. From what I’ve noticed, most of the people here are a combination of most of the following: white, wealthy, successful, Greek (as in, sororities/fraternities), passionate about making a change, inexperienced, and still in a college frame of mind (as in, they have no idea what the real world is like, and the only things they know how to do for fun are play frisbee and drink alcohol). Am I being judgmental? Yes. Am I generalizing? Yes. But this is Teach for America, and these are the kinds of people that tend to be attracted to the program. In a nutshell, they’re not my typical kind of people. But I am being honest and genuine when I say that I want to build as many sincere and compassionate relationships with these people as possible. And I will learn from them. Lots.

Anyway, we’ve been having workshops and lectures up the wazoo about “stories of self,” relationship building, diversity, community, and facets of teaching, not to mention the achievement gap, poverty, low-income schools, the education system in America, etc. I AM NOT GOING TO BORE YOU WITH THE DETAILS. Unless you specifically want to hear about this stuff. If you DO, I suggest you watch the movie “Waiting for Superman” because it is totally awesome and fantastic and inspiring and will show you what I’m up against and what I’ll be doing for the next 2+ years.

I’m in an emotional battlefield with everything that’s going on, especially my own personal major challenge, which is not speaking to Keith for the next 6 months. That was a very difficult conversation to have. After a week of calling him every day to tell him what I was experiencing and to get his support and advice, he realized we needed to set firm boundaries. Considering that my fervent wish was for him to move to Oklahoma with me and get married, I’m pretty upset. But dealing with it.

In other news, so far the food has been great, the living situations have been great (especially now that I have my own room for the next 5 weeks!) and Tulsa has been GREAT! I love Tulsa! The culture and atmosphere here is young, liberal (take this with a grain of salt, we’re still in the Bible Belt), artsy, live and let live. There is really strong history here that continually impacts the people living here (the Tulsa Race Riots for instance). Oh, and, it’s pretty! At least in the summer. I haven’t been taking any photos but I’ll try to hop on that. But I am VERY excited to start looking for a little house where I can grow a garden and get a pet cat (fairy tale).

And yes, sometimes a Southern accent makes its way out of my mouth. Interestingly enough.

The week leading up to my departure from Portland was hectic and stressful. At night I would wake up with my whole body tensed up, full of apprehension and worries. If I happened to be sleeping next to Keith I would grab hold of him until a sense of peace washed over me and I fell back asleep. During the days, I felt a mixture of urgency to start my journey and a reluctance to leave. I worked fervently on the quilt I was making for Keith, cutting, sewing, shaping, smoothing, its progress inversely proportional to the hours remaining for me in Portland. I finished it on my last night in Portland and felt a huge amount of relief; it was done, it was created, a product of my love and hard work and a token of myself to leave behind.

The next morning I packed up my car, minus my expensive tupperware, and Mom and I headed out. We stayed in Weston, a tiny town in Oregon where her boyfriend is building a house. They took me to the nearby casino where I crossed gambling off my bucket list, the nearby Walmart where I bought a $45 point-and-shoot, and a local garage sale where I bought my last Oregon treasure — a beautiful tea plate painted in blue, red, and gold patterns.

Oregon to Idaho to Utah

I got off to a late start my last morning in Oregon, so I tried to make good time on the road. That was easy, because there was absolutely nothing interesting to look at once I got into Idaho. All day I switched CDs in my car between The High Kings (Irish ballad/folk) and Dropkick Murphys (Irish-American punk rock), interspersed with long periods of “introspective” silence. I sent Keith some progress-update cellphone pictures of things along the way, including a huge fire I saw from a burning building. It started out small, but by the time I had driven 20 miles away from it, I could still see it in my rearview mirror! Idaho was dry and had ugly little bushes and gross-looking factories everywhere. It got a lot prettier once I neared Utah, when the sun was starting to go down.

I pulled into my campsite with just enough time to set up my tent, get stuff out of my car, and take a camp-shower before it was completely dark outside. I set up my cooking supplies to heat up some tortilla soup only to find that I had the wrong butane canisters for my butane-powered camp stove. Oops, guess I should have checked way earlier. So I had an apple and a granola bar for dinner.

Utah to Wyoming to Colorado

Driving through Northeast Utah was incredible. For most of the drive I was whipping my head back and forth to take in all the scenery and swerving all over the middle of the highway (there weren’t any other cars near me… don’t worry). Every now and then I would gasp or exclaim “OHMYGOD!!” at the incredibly CUTE and ENCHANTING churches, houses, hills, trees, fences, etc. that I saw. If I was a Mormon, I would be living there this second, without a doubt. I would have pulled over and never left. It felt like the fairy tale home that I’ve always wanted to live in.

Wyoming… On the other hand… Was not so fun. I stopped at a Walmart to see if I wanted to spend money on a new camp stove; turns out $40 was too much for me. I stopped at a McDonald’s to use the free WiFi (thanks, McDonald’s!!!) and saw that Keith had reinstated his Facebook account and changed his status to “not in a relationship.” Although I knew this was coming… Actually seeing it was heartbreaking. I cried for about 10 minutes, and then went outside and cried for another 20 minutes. I had to go inside twice to get napkins to blow my nose. The crazy cell phone towers in Wyoming were making my phone go crazy and turning off and on over and over again. I freaked out and thought my phone was permanently messed up. I borrowed a cell phone from a trucker at a rest stop and called Mom: “Mom! Don’t worry! My phone is broken, so I can’t call you! But don’t worry. I’ll call you from a payphone later.” The last three hours of Wyoming was an INTENSE rainstorm, complete with lightning, thunder, and roads that had SHEETS of water on them. I tried to keep my speed at 70mph but WOOH that didn’t feel all too safe.

Finally got to my campsite at Colorado which was completely full of people with huge shiny vehicles, huge shiny campers, and huge shiny boats. I was literally the only person with 1) a car more than 5 years old and 2) a tent. But things worked out just fine (except for the time my tent flew away and I had to catch it and hold it down with my cooler) (oh yeah, and my entire campsite had about 50 anthills all over it with ants crawling around everywhere) and I went on a loooong beeaaauutiful walk through tall grass, big oaks trees, lakes and ponds, and some flowers and birds that I had never seen before. One birdsong was so beautiful that I stood in the twilight in the middle of a field and just listened to it for 10 or so minutes, thinking about how discovering nature in new places is probably my favorite thing about traveling.

Colorado to Kansas

I drove into Denver thinking I was going to eat breakfast after randomly selecting a breakfast spot from my GPS. It was a Sunday, and my GPS took me to Denver’s downtown area, where there literally was not a parking spot to be found. ANYWHERE. Traffic was hectic and the streets were all one ways with weird signals, so I started feeling extremely anxious and stressed out. I went to a Safeway instead and 1) ate breakfast and 2) bought some sandwhich stuff, cold drinks, and ice to put into my cooler for camping that night. I drove around Denver a little more just for fun and then headed into the land of FLATNESS!! Kansas and beyond! I was soooo hot (my car doesn’t have air conditioning, or at least it’s not working right now) I had my windows rolled all the way down ALL DAY and I had a spray bottle that I was constantly spraying all over myself. Fun stuff. I stopped repeatedly at gas stations etc. just to cool off and even bought some Baskin Robbins 31 ice cream — MEN IN BLACK 3 FLAVORED — for only $2.39/2 scoops. Which, oh yeah, did I mention how when I left Portland, gas was $4.35, and when I got to Oklahoma, it was $3.16?

Much to my surprise, the Kansas campground I stayed at was the BEST. Because it was a Sunday evening there was hardly anyone there. A large lake wrapped around the camp area which was on a biiiigggg hill. The campsites were super spread out. Overall the grounds were beautiful with perfect weather. The water looked great for swimming, but I have to admit, I felt VERY WEIRD about going swimming all by myself. After hiking around I enjoyed my wonderful cold dinner and called pretty much everyone I know. That’s a huge exaggeration… I think I called like four people. But that many conversations in one night is a lot for me! I spent my last night alone in my tent, which all around was pretty comfortable and nowhere near as lonely as I was expecting (I felt just fine, actually.)

Kansas to Oklahoma

Although I started my morning as early as possible, the drive to Oklahoma was even hotter than the previous day, but it was only 5 hours and I wanted to get where I was going ASAP. Honestly, this part of the trip is pretty boring, except for the part where I got to the state that I never ever would have imagined I would be living in, but am now living in, which is great

The first night out I’m staying in Pendleton, Oregon with my mom and her boyfriend at her boyfriend’s house. It’s only 4 hours from Portland, so I won’t be getting far, but it will be a nice baby step for leaving. Then I’ll be camping in Willard, Utah, Loveland, Colorado, and Russell, Kansas. I made all of my camping reservations next to lakes, with showers, and in range of a T-Mobile tower. Hah! No, I’m not roughing it. I think that’d be a little too much for me to handle all by myself. Maybe next time.

The stars are where I’m camping! The purple blob is Tulsa, OK where I’ll be living (and hopefully loving life) for the next two years.

In completely unrelated news… I saw The Avengers. I thought it was awesome. I’m a huge fan of Robert Downey Jr. and he didn’t let me down. Samuel L. Jackson also did a FANTASTIC job playing Fury! As I was growing up I never cared much for superheroes. I never wanted to read comic books or anything like that. I didn’t think Superman or Spiderman were all that great. But as I got into my late teens I started having dreams that I was a superhero. Literally – that I was Batman. I still dream about being a superhero every now and then. And every time I see a superhero movie (EVEN the Fantastic Four) I am shocked at how much I enjoy it. Superheroes have really become the Gods of our American culture, the figures of myth that relate to us and inspire us and create in us an URGE to be good and do good and live in a world of good. It’s sad that there are few great real-life role models for the children growing up in America today, but it is awesome that we have all these fantastic movies supporting these mythic figures. And yes, I DO think you should let your kids watch these movies despite the violence. My argument for that can wait for another day.

In more unrelated news, I hate the evil world of retail and I am so glad that in less than two weeks I will be DONE with it FOREVER!!!! Yes, forever. I’m never going back. Never, ever, eeevvveerrrr. It is my sincere belief that retail brings out the absolute worst in everybody. Except for those weirdos out there that are genuinely happy and peppy all the time. What the hell is wrong with those people?