St. Augustine and Everything After

I know, I know. Epic fail on my part. When I actually DO have something interesting to say, I sit on it for weeks. Whatever.

I went to St. Augustine mid February, from the 15th to the 17th. We had that Monday AND Tuesday off of school and I wasn't about to sit around Miami being lame, so I decided to take a road trip. It was one of those, "If you build it they will come" sort of situations, because two of my co-workers (and friends) heard about my plan and decided to come with me. It was awesome to have them along, and it sure made the five hour drive each way much more tolerable.

Our hotel was awesome; it allowed pets, was super cheap, and was within walking distance of almost everything we wanted to see. Win!

So the first thing we went to was the Fountain of Youth. Turns out, it's really just a natural sulfur spring, but Ponce de Leon (all four feet and eleven inches of him) believed it was magic water. So anyway, here's Betty and I at the gate.

Next we went to the La Leche thingy. It was pretty, and peaceful. It's a shrine to Mary and the site of the first mission in the U.S. It was right across from our hotel.

After that, we headed down St. George street to explore down there. That is the old section of town, I guess. So here's Betty, me, and Tanya at the city gates. We had to take this picture a few times because people were, um, special.

And here we are at the oldest wooden school house in the U.S. Let's just say they put bad kids in "the dungeon" and I was inspired...

After a lovely walk and some lunch, we headed to a fortress/fort thingy, El Castillo. We found this lovely gentleman at the top. I'm feelin' his outfit!

I took the perfect people with me because Betty teaches history and Tanya teaches religion. I figure all the bases were covered. :) We had a great time and I'm so happy I got out and saw something new! St. Augustine was a great place for a cheap, interesting, long weekend. Win! Of course, there are more pictures. You can view the album on Facebook by clicking here. This album also has a more comprehensive narrative of the trip.

Let's see... what else have I been up to? Oh, the following weekend we had ETC #58, so I spent Friday night to Sunday afternoon at school. This ETC (Encounter Towards Christ) was quite different from the last one. There were more participants and it was a much more social ETC, as in there were several cliques of kids that came. It was still beautiful, though. I forget that some of these kids are going through some stuff, like some seriously tough stuff, and yet they still manage to try and be kids. I'll admit--I've had a relatively easy life. I haven't had to deal with that much heavy stuff--my parents are still married, I have a decent if not good relationship with them, I have great friends, I'm fairly successful and happy, no one that close to me has died or even been seriously ill... I'm doing okay. And high school was STILL hard for me. But some of these kids... Man, they're amazing. Seriously.

That's why I'm so committed to doing ETC. I get to see the kids in a whole new light, I get to feel with them and support them, but most importantly I get to remember that they're just kids trying to do life and there's a beauty in some of them that just doesn't exist in my classroom, but exists in them. As always, it was an emotional weekend for everyone, but overall a great weekend, too.

Don't get me wrong, though, it wasn't all intense God-loving. I worked on the palanca team and we basically gave eachother fake tattoos all weekend so we could be "hard core." It was kind of hilarious. For example, here's my neck tattoo. Rachel (one of the kids) said that it was me in a past life, which I thought was hilarious. Neck tattoos are hard core.

As are giant phoenix tattoos on your calf. Yeah, I could make it fly.

We were all pretty much covered by the end of the weekend. It was hilarious.

Last weekend, our boy's basketball team played in the regional final game. It was in town (last year it was in, like, Ft. Lauderdale or something) and we were supposed to get completely pulverized. We didn't. The Royals played an amazing game, and were ahead for most of the third quarter. Sadly a series of unfortunate events occured and we ended up losing by about 10 points (pretty good, considering we were supposed to get demolished). The kids took it pretty hard but they couldn't have done anything more.

Some teachers got together and threw the team a special pep rally on Monday. My job was to get a little sign made for each kid. It had their name and what they'd accomplished: District Champions, Regional Finalists, Florida's Elite Eight, and each kid's name. Of course, when I'm standing at the kiosk in the mall, who do I hear but one of the kids? I've taught him for two years so I know his voice better than my own (he talk a lot and I see him EVERY day). He's at the mall, with two of his team mates, drowning his sorrows with retail therapy. I was just like, "You need to go away right now. Go away." I'm sure he knew something was up, but he didn't come to school the next day so he missed the surprise anyway. To tell you the truth, I was kind of sad he didn't show, especially since a) he was a team captain b) three or four different people were on his case all day to come to school and c) he would have appreciated it. Anyway, it was great and the guys were happy.

Nothing else really new. Rico isn't staying with us anymore which is both sad and a relief. The two boys were starting to get along...

I took this after we'd taken them to a local high school to run around on the baseball fields. They were tuckered out!

Life's been pretty busy lately, which is great. I'm grading papers during the week and busy most weekends. I'm glad to have it that way becasue sitting around being bored is over-rated. However, I'd be nice to have some time to, y'know, clean my house and do laundry. But who needs clean clothes, right?

Much love.