It was a wonderful trip. Truly, everything that could go right – went right! The weather was spectacular; especially since we left cold, snow, and ice behind us.  Our flights were all on time or early. While in St. Patrick’s in Dublin, a man came over to our group and asked if he could show us around. It turned out he is the Dean of the church. We were in Dublin when Ireland won the world rugby championship for the first time in sixty-one years. The celebration that went on after that was amazing! In London I was walking down the street with a few of my kids and the queen and her motorcade went by. I’ve been to London a whole lot of times and have never seen the queen. Yeah yeah, I know some of you are not into the whole royal thing, but we thought it was cool to see her.

 By the time we were heading home, I was convinced our plane would crash. I’ve never had such a smooth trip – something had to go wrong! When we hit turbulence over Canada, I figured that was it – my time was up. It was a damn pleasant surprise to put my feet on terra firma at the end of the day.

The only drawback is the nasty cold I picked up while there. I swear my body is just not accustomed to the germs found across the pond. This one has hit me like a ton of bricks and it utterly sucks.

 In any case I’ll probably babble about some of our adventures in later blogs. In the meantime, I’m befuddled about the whole return of Keith and efx2 thing. I skimmed over a bit of what happened. My sympathy goes out to Keith in the breakup of his marriage and any other personal problems he had while he wasn’t around. Yet, I cannot help but think of all the work Pixie and Company put into the creation of a new website for us.

 While I love efx2, I have to admit the reason I love the place so much is because of the people found there. Pixie embodies that. When it seemed as if our happy little community was about to go belly up, she took on the huge task that was involved with keeping us all together. I don’t know when she started putting efx3 together and I cannot pretend to understand all that goes into creating something like that. I just know that suddenly she put up a blog entry saying that’s what she’d been quietly doing while the rest of us hoped for a miracle to save our site.

I will continue to post links to my efx3 blog at efx2, but I will use efx3 as my primary site for as long as Pixie is willing to keep it going. I know it’s been difficult for some to decide where to blog now that both efx2 and efx3 are options – I can understand that. For me, I am sticking with the dedication I believe Pixie has to keeping us all together.

Thanks, Pixie!

Peace

I’m leaving on a jet plane, but I’ll be back again.

In the morning I’m heading out to the land of green – also known as Ireland. From there I’m heading to Wales and England.

I was hoping to find time to leave a longer entry before I left, but the time got away from me. It’s been an utterly hectic evening and I’m still not packed! Argh! I always do this to myself.

Play nice with each other while I’m away!

Peace

Sometimes I just want to wrap my fingers around the throats of some parents and choke the livin’ daylights out of them. Ever since I started this tutoring/mentoring thing with the younger kids, I have found myself even angrier at the crap I see kids dealing with.

Boy 1 – He’s the Christmas kid, the one my kids and I bought the tree and presents for a while back. Now he’s scrambling to figure out where he’ll be living. One day his mom wants him, the next day “she’s too stressed and depressed” to deal with a fourteen year old. It’s up and down for him. When she’s down, she slaps him into the shelter – he never knows if he’ll be home that night or not. When he is home, he has an old rollaway bed with the springs poking him. He’s terrified she’ll follow her latest boyfriend off to Texas and take him with her. His fear is she’ll get angry there and ditch him that far away with nobody to go do for help.

Girl 1 – She is currently living in the shelter too. It’s not because she got into trouble; it’s because her parents are splitting up and they want her to stay there until they decide what do with her. She and Boy 1 play Monopoly together whenever he is dumped there. I had no idea parents could even do things like this.

Girl 2 – She amazes me. She finds me every morning before school to get help on her math or to just touch base to say hello. Her grades are soaring and she’s so proud of herself. My tutors and I work with her constantly and she’s so eager to please all of us. Sadly, her own mother doesn’t care what she does in school – this little girl is working completely without any support from home.

Boy 2 – A while ago I realized he’s really struggling with his math skills. He came to us from a different school and somehow nobody noticed how far behind he really is. He was popped into a pre-algebra class and he can barely multiply and divide. I had him pulled from the class and assigned to me. I’m not a math teacher, but I rounded up some older kids and we worked with him every single day – two hours a day. We helped him with everything from math to geography – his grades were climbing, his self-confidence was soaring. Today his mom showed up and simply pulled him from school. He was crying when he left.

I have all these kids and more at the end of every day. There are times that I say g’bye at the end of the day, then break down in tears when they leave. I know that there are kids all over the place who have even bigger problems that my special ones do and it makes me sick to think of how terrible the world has treated so many of them.

If there was a way to take them all home with me, I would. But, kids aren’t like library books that we borrow – they need someone who can commit to keeping them forever. Whenever we can we get social service involved, but they are swamped as well. It seems we are raising an entire generation of disposable kids. What happens when those kids grow up and become parents themselves? Will they have a clue how to actually parent or will they just become sperm and/or egg donors themselves?

Sometimes – between the No Child Left Behind Laws and the lack of parenting for so many of the kids I see, I contemplate just walking away and leaving teaching behind. Sometimes, the frustration and tears just overwhelm me and I want to just hit something.

I wonder if this society will ever place value on its kids.

Peace

Apparently, I have a new “boyfriend”. The tour director for my upcoming trip is constantly emailing me and calling me. That’s sort of normal – just not to the extent that he has been doing it. However, as the trip gets closer he’s added a few extras. He’s talking about how he’s going to show me parts of Dublin that I’m going to love “after” the kids are all tucked in back at the hotel. He calls me “dreamgirl”. He goes on and on about all kinds of things. It’s odd.

I have mixed feelings about this trip. I’m looking forward to showing the kids around some places I love, but I’m less than impressed with the group of people they have paired my group up with.

My tour consultant was oddly reticent whenever I asked about them. He changed the subject or said he didn’t have very much information on the other group. Once I found out, I wasn’t a happy camper.

I have traveled with this company for years. It’s a “student” tour company, and I’ve had a lot of fantastic times with them. The tours are fast paced and geared for kids. The hotels are nothing fancy, there is a lot of walking, and all that jazz. I tend to prepare any adults that have opted to travel with us, but have seen an awful lot of other groups bringing adults that whine continuously and simply cannot keep up with a bunch of kids.

Therein lies part of the problem – the group we are traveling with is made up mostly of adults. In short, it seems a lot of older people signed up to take a couple of kids across the pond. Hell, the other teacher is bringing her mother, two aunts, an uncle, and her grandfather! This is – let me repeat  – a STUDENT tour company! They are bringing far more adults than they are kids.

Sorry to sound like such a nagger, but I’ve experienced this before with my kids. Groups of adults tend to assume the kids should be in the back of the bus. Certainly, kids tend to like that – but it shouldn’t be a given. The adults swarm to the front of the pack when tour guides are talking. They expect the kids to defer to them constantly because “they are adults”. I resent this. If they want an adult tour – they shouldn’t book on a student one just because the price is better!

Next comes my other rant. Not only is this an adult group – it is an adult group from a VERY right wing Christian conservative church. They do not like gays, they do not like Catholics, they do not drink, they do not smoke, they do ingest caffeine, they do not play cards, etc. Their school website says students are banned from wearing jewelry, colored hair, make up, painted fingernails, listening to non-Christian music, watching most television shows, etc.

My kids and I get to spend a week and a half with these people. Needless to say I’m somewhat ornery about the whole thing.

On the other hand, it could be an interesting experience. I refuse to ask my kids to act any differently than they normally do. I’ve always been complimented on how well my students act when we travel. They are kids and are allowed to be kids, but I won’t let them act like idiots. As long as they act as they normally have, I refuse to back down any further.

We’ll all wear make up, do our hair, wear jewelry, giggle, laugh, listen to music, go dancing, and play cards. Nothing will change and if the other group has issues with it, too bad. I refuse to have my kids cowed by a bunch of self-righteous adults.

On the other hand, it could all be just me anticipating problems that aren’t going to occur.

I just want to be mentally ready for this one. Ya’ know?

Peace

She’s such a damn tease. She taunts and makes promises of good things to come. Sadly, the beetch loves to lead her victims on. She seems to love the eagerness, the hope, the desire she sees in their eyes. Then suddenly, without warning, she snatches everything away once again.

Yup, I’m talking about that ‘orrible bitch called Mother Nature. She’s getting everyone’s hopes up that spring is actually around the corner. I’ve learned my lesson though. I am no longer the naive little Minnesotan that I once was. I remember the blizzard that hit last April 11th!

I’m NOT putting my mittens away!

Peace

Consider this my “first” official blog entry over here. I like what I am seeing. It amazes me how some people can figure out how to even put a site like this together. I’ve managed to dig around, find a design that I rather like, and how to put categories up. Not bad for a rookie. I still have to work out how to put up links and things like that, but it will come.

I’m hoping we can all get settled here soon. What I have always loved about our efx stuf f is the fact that this group of people seem to genuinely give a shit about each other. That’s not something that you see at many other sites. It really amazes me how we’ve scrambled to keep in touch and keep up with each other though the ups and downs of our lives and the crashing of various blog sites.

In any case, I’ll be here scrambling to figure out a new site. The nice thing is, I know that when I get stuck someone will probably be nice enough to help me figure something out.

And now, I’m shutting off the computer and heading off into the real world to do something that I DO know how to do – shop!

Peace

Well I’ll be damned, I’m starting another blog thanks to Pixie and everyone else who is helping out around here.

It’s awesome that you have taken the time to do this for the rest of us – especially people like me who are clueless!

Thanks mucho!

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