Catching up

I finally downloaded some pictures from December when a lot of my family was here for Christmas. We played in the snow and built half an igloo. We put on the nativity several times. My nieces and nephews used my head-wraps from Egypt and they had a marvelous time. My mom, being the wonderful grandma that she is usually buys matching pajamas for her grandchildren. I absolutely loved spending that much time with my family. It's a rare opportunity for my family to get to spend time together.
.

Teacher's College at Columbia

I got my acceptance letter today to Teacher's College at Columbia University. I am still waiting to hear back from Northwestern University, but it's a great feeling to know I've been accepted somewhere.

Christmas Concert

Life has been a little crazy and hectic this past month, but I wanted to show off my choir's performance from December. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of my students singing, but I made sure that I recorded the whole concert with a video camera. My students did really well and I was so proud of them. Here is a clip of the first song we performed, "Ding, Dong Merrily on High." I did a bell theme, and all of my choirs got to use bell plates, a less expensive form of hand bells. I borrowed the bell plates from BYU. What would I do without my professors?
I also have two amazing student moms that accompany my choirs. One comes in the morning with my before school choir, and the other comes for an hour during the day to play for my 5th grade and 6th grade choirs. I am so thankful for parents' support at my school.
I did little performances with every grade the last week of school, but this concert was the biggest performance we had. My choirs will have another concert in March and our final concert in May.

Elementary School Halloween

Although it's a little belated, I wanted to share a little bit of my magical Halloween in an elementary school with everyone. I spend three days dressing up like a witch and playing Halloween games and dancing to Camille Saint-Saens Danse Macabre. The kids love it, and we have a lot of fun. Last year I put up a witch and a huge ghost over my piano and bats flying from the ceiling. This year I did all of that, and added tombstones. They were all dead composers, and the students loved the fact that I had a tombstone as well.
For the Halloween parade around the school I dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. After being a witch for three days straight, it was time for a change, and my students love trying to guess what I am going to be. Besides, I already had the dress from Camille's wedding. My mom made the adorable Toto, and it completed my costume.



Antonio Vivaldi, Duke Ellington, Woody Guthrie


My Dorothy costume. (Obviously I had to be someone else because Miss Ward was dead already.)


Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann

New York

I took a trip with two of my roommates to New York over fall break. It was a birthday present to all of us from ourselves since it was all of our birthdays in October. However, my birthday actually happened while we were in New York. My reason for going was to go look at Teacher's College at Columbia, and I spent half a day there, but all three of us really spent most of our time playing in the city. It was an amazing birthday.


On Times Square after going to "In the Heights"



We were absolutely freezing when we went to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. It was still worth it though to brave the cold.






Finding our way using the subway map!









My birthday dinner with Heather, Nina, and Carli!





On the Brooklyn Bridge looking towards Manhattan.

And the job hunt ceases...

I found out today that I get to keep my full-time music position at Edgemont for at least another year. I'm quite excited that that stress is over and I can now make some plans. I will most likely be going through this same process again this time next year, but in the meantime, I am quite thankful.

Music Classroom

This year has been an exciting adventure. Starting when I got back from Jerusalem I started setting up my classroom. I had lots of help from family and friends, and put together my super hero room. I know that some of you haven't been to see my room yet, so I thought I'd finally show it off digitally. Right now because of the economy and budget cuts I am in a tentative situation on whether I will be teaching at Edgemont next year or not. I have things I am hoping for, but I know that whatever happens will be what is supposed to happen.

Halloween...a little late...and other updates

I know it's almost Thanksgiving, but my only exciting recent news is from Halloween, so I thought I'd share. Working at an elementary school I really got to celebrate Halloween much more than I have in past years (probably since I was in elementary school). I dressed up as a witch for three days in a row and decorated my room with bats and a ghost hanging from the ceiling, and had a witch made out of my easel and a cauldron made out of one of my drums. I sang Halloween songs with the students and played a few games with them. We finished by dancing to/acting out a classical piece of music called Danse Macabre, by Camille Saint-Saens. The music tells the story of death personified coming into a graveyard and calling the Halloween creatures to dance with him. The kids loved it. However, I didn't only dress up as a witch. On Halloween itself, I also was a composer, to tie in with the fact that I'm a music teacher, for the school costume parade. (Think Elizabeth Swan from Pirates of the Carribean, and that's about right--I actually was Mozart's sister Nannerl) The students had no idea who I was, but the loved the fact that I looked "beautiful".
I went to a party that night with some friends dressed up that way as well. I helped a friend put green food coloring and egg whites in a wig for his joker costume. Mom also made him a vest from a green shirt. I would have to say he looked pretty authentic. I don't always love Halloween, but this was a pretty good year. Besides the Halloween excitement, I really haven't done much but teach every day. I do love my job though, and it's never boring, but I still don't have much to share with everyone in terms of things happening in my life.

Merilee--as The Candy cane from CandyLand, Isaac--as the Joker, and me--as Nannerl Mozart (or some 1700's character)

On to Thanksgiving thoughts. I'm extremely grateful for the five day break this week. I have my choir concert (with my three choirs) coming up on December 10th and I don't feel anywhere ready. I'm grateful for my home in Heber. I'm still trying to figure out housing for next semester. I was planning on moving to Provo in January. Well...those plans have fallen through, so I am back to square one in looking for housing. I might end up staying at home or paying a lot more for housing than I would like to pay, but I know everything will work out eventually.

Changes

I know it's been a few months since I wrote anything, but I haven't felt like my life has been quite as exciting since the last time I wrote. Also, I don't have access to a fast internet connection, so posting pictures is going to be rather difficult, but I wanted to let people know what is happening in my life. Since I got home from the Holy Land I have been focusing on teaching. School started for me the middle of August, which has kept me more than busy. I am living in Heber and driving to Provo every day. The past few weeks the leaves have been absolutely beautiful. I'm sure the snow and ice will distract from the beauty of Provo Canyon here very soon, but for the time being, I love the drive.
I absolutely love teaching, but I come home exhausted every day. I am the music specialist, and have Kindergarten through 6th grade. My biggest challenges are Kindergarten (with 29 students in a class who have never gone to school before, don't know how to make a line, etc.) and 6th grade (who have forgotten how to be respectful, and require just as much attention as the kindergarten students). It really is a lot of fun for me though. That is what I do every day, but the great thing is that every day is different. I have a super hero theme for my room, and it has been so much fun to implement that theme into management and little things I do with the students.
I have started making dinner with some friends down in Provo three nights a week and I also attend institute in Provo a different night, so I am spending more time in Provo than in Heber recently. Mostly because there really isn't anyone our age who lives in Heber right now, so any socializing has to be done elsewhere. It makes for late nights driving the canyon. I'm still figuring out the best schedule for myself--but it will all work out eventually.
On a good note, I had my first good experience with 6th graders this week. It was so exciting. We are working on Winter songs for our concert in December, and the 6th graders were not exciting to sing this song, and everything has been chaotic. I was been super strict with them trying to get them to behave, but I had to do something to get them excited. I found a copy of the song we are singing on iTunes, but they only had it in spanish, and we are singing it in english. I got it anyway. It is a pretty fast song, and I gave them the music and told them to follow along as best as they could. It was going so fast, they didn't have time to think about misbehaving, and they fell in love with the song. I know every day I won't be able to do this, but it was a great start, and it made me really happy to have one good day with them.

Ode to the Blue Fanny Pack

Since getting home I have had a few people comment about the blue fanny pack that I am wearing in a majority of my pictures. I thought I would give a little explanation. We had to wear headsets on all of our field trips, and the blue fanny pack is what the headset came it. However, it also came in handy when needing something to carry other things in as well, because it wasn't very safe to wear a backpack because pickpockets could easily slice the bottom with a razor. Keeping things in pockets/purses wasn't especially safe either. It was best to carry it in front of you. Here is a list of things that I frequently carried with me, and needed close at hand: Water bottle, hand sanitizer (Egypt and Jordan), toilet paper (again, Egypt and Jordan), sunglasses, my id card and key, hymn book, sunscreen, flashlight, pen, guide book, notebook, etc.
Even though the blue fanny pack wasn't the most attractive attition to my wardrobe, I definitely appreciated it. And, all the people in the Old City knew who we were when we wore it (they knew who we were when we didn't wear it.)
Wearing the blue fanny pack was an integral part of my Jerusalem Center experience.