so hot my car has to wear shades...

another boring day...it's saturday, and i need to go to the big store, but i decided i would wait until monday when people are at work. what is the big store? it's where adults go to buy major appliances...i need to look at some washers and driers. i've been renting them from my complex and they're kinda terrible. i have way over paid by renting them all this time. anyhoo...i need to look into that! (any suggestions of where to purchase that might have installment plans?)

i took the boys for a walk and we stopped at the office, and i had to ask jessica some questions, but i didn't get all of the answers i needed, because there were some other residents coming in and i didn't want to keep her, so i'll go back tomorrow-important things to finish discussing. they'll be looking for leasing agents i think, because one of the gals (whom i may have mentioned...a little on the snooty side) is no longer here.

i am thrilled that one of my friends (a former kamper) is moving to dallas, and i now have someone who will go to the midnight showing of the hobbit in december!!! woohoo!! i am beyond excited! i mean, i would've gone alone, we all know that wouldn't stop me, but it's just more fun with a friend to discuss points afterward!

tonight i had to stop at burger house because i was craving it...it was so hot i had to put the shades up while i waited in line! heat heat please go away...

perhaps i should invest in getting the windows tinted

 and here's another little blast from the past                                                                                   

feathered hair was all the rave...this was in our first apartment in costa rica.

up on the wall you can see a partial of an art project-a dancing senorita. that guitar-still have it. in fact, my parents had me bring it back to dallas with me this trip. and believe it or not, it's still in tune! i got it in 83 and it's as good now as it was then! this was the apartment where i felt my first earthquake tremor-things actually fell off the shelves! that was 5th grade. so many great memories about costa rica. 

in our training, the trainer mentioned an insect project from when she was in 5th grade, which really made me remember ms. gonzalez, my 5th grade teacher and the same project! only, being in costa rica, it was easy to find crazy looking insects-i had quite the variety from walking sticks to leaf bugs, beetles, etc. it was pretty amazing! good thing peta wasn't around down there!

i got to see my 

first smoking volcano

first inactive volcano

first parrots

first ox cart

first pops ice cream

first 4-square game

first monkeys owned by civilians

first time someone stole something from mom (chicken from her purse-not sure if i told that story...it was on a crowded bus)

first candy with kahlua inside

favorite friend: amy porter. more about her another day.

friend i would randomly meet up with 5 or 6 years later: milagros castro. after i moved to HONDURAS, we had a basketball tournament in el salvador with international schools from various central american countries. i was the token gringa, and being such a novelty, everyone automatically thought i must be a star bball player-could be that my hair is so blonde they figured i must be related to larry bird...anyhoo, we were at a restaurant when a girl randomly walked up and said, "julie!" and then introduced herself as my old friend from costa rica. i don't recall whose team won the game when we played them. i tried to pretend like i had a great time in el salvador, but we stayed with random families, and the gal that i was staying with didn't seem very excited about having me there. so i was like bruno on that trip-pretended it was great fun, but basically i endured it. the fact is the best part about that trip was meeting up with milagros again and catching up.

julie

mural blues and costa rican memories prompted by a switchblade and towelettes

yesterday morning i was not planning to go to school today tow paint murals, but ms. camacho caught me in the afternoon and said that she and tony were going in today from 9-12 to paint and dr. hughes told her to let me know in case i wanted to come up. as much as i didn't want to, i decided to go ahead and go in because the week is going to be busy with a monday meeting and tues/thurs tutoring.

so today was a blues day...i fixed water around the world(s).

they were a straight, flat, dark blue, so i decided to lighten it up so that when we go in and add the tropic lines and the equator and the ocean names, they will be legible.

 there is still so much left to do! boo.

while i was painting i remembered a story shea told me over spring break about buying a switchblade in mexico and it reminded me of when we lived in costa rica for our first year. i was in 5th grade and my brother was in 7th. he bought a switchblade when we were there. it was an interesting year of transition. i remember loving it when we were downtown and got to stop at kfc...they had the best-smelling moist towelettes to wash your hands with. i think it was the familiarity that i loved more than the chicken. well, once they started serving breakfast in the classroom here at our school(which, if i haven't mentioned it before...even if i have, is a waste), one of the bags had moist towelettes that smelled just like the ones of old...great memories!

and of course that memory took me back to a couple of others, like being in downtown san jose and smelling the helotes-corn on the grill. i also remember being on the bus and seeing the sign that said 'no fume' but i thought there were plenty of bad fumes on the bus. and more than once while we were on the bus, people would touch my hair if they were sitting behind me (that kinda' freaks a kid out..what am i, a lucky charm?)

oh, and the church we went to when we first got there was way across town. i remember one sunday they had a birthday party after the service and they scooped ice cream into cups. no problem-i have no problem with that. what i did have a problem with was when they ran out of spoons and just waited for someone to get finished and wiped off the spoon and re-purposed it into the cup that was handed to me. gross. pretty sure i "accidentally" dropped the spoon and just ate it like a cone. (i didn't eat the styrofoam cup like a cone, i just kinda' drank-ate it).

other costa rican memories...my brother had a texas instruments computer and the coolest game-a space ship that moved up and down and straight forward with a burst of speed...thriller...total eclipse of the heart...box turtle named relampago (lightning), playing charlie's angels in the apt. courtyard-behind and around the banana trees...strange new fruits including the star fruit and mamones...punta arenas and limon beaches....amy and billy my best friends...gaither band....school bus driver with creepy goatee that looked like a child molester and once in awhile he would stop at a push-cart vendor and get us all ice cream-cicles...thanks costa rica, you were fun!

all of that because of shea's switchblade and our towelettes!
julie

what do cei's and the gingerbread man have in common?

ok, i know what you're thinking..just kidding, no i don't! i'm not a mind reader! but you're about to know what i'm thinking!
but what do they have in common? well...they both make sense only in some kind of fairytale land.

yesterday while i was administering the math TAKS test, i kept hearing a little squeaky sound and thought i saw something out of the corner of my eye. when i looked, i didn't see anything. except for one time. i sneaked a peak and saw the gingerbread warrior flailing his arms, then he froze as soon as he noticed me watching him.

and today, while they were taking their reading test, i was admiring the carpet/rug. it was very colorful and had designs and random letters and numbers everywhere. so, you know how i am about random letters, i started making words, because that's what i do! and then the designs started playing games- for example:

is it 4 flowers, or is it 2 circles beside each other with a diamond in the middle..or two circles on top of each other with diamonds in the middle...or is it just 4 diamonds..or is it on big diamond with a flower in the middle? hmm..and on and on...

but yes, i was actively monitoring the students.

and as i was monitoring, i was reminded that i had agreed to go to a focus group meeting this evening from 5 to 7. downtown.ugh. why do i agree to these things? i got there with no problem. the worse part was once we got inside (a little late), i had no idea what they were talking about besides pay-performance. hmm..well i didn't have much to say until we got to the end and they were talking about the ever elusive CEI (classroom effectiveness indexes-which no one can explain); i did have something to add after that because i don't always have a high CEI, but i know that i am an effective teacher, so i told them that: i sign up every year just for kicks because i know that i should get the performance pay because i perform my job well, but then at the end of the year even though there has been growth, i feel like they've put me in a dark gym and spun me around and said, "you get one shot to make the free throw, but we're not going to point you toward the basket..good luck!"

ok, enough of that, i would like you to know that today i did see something that made me smile. it was probably while the kids were having snack...

i mean, c'mon, tell me that doesn't make you smile!

it reminded me of when i lived in HONDURAS and there was this cage-like not really a zoo, but they had monkeys in a cage. i think it was in tela...anyhoo, we went and a girl got a little too close to the cage (maybe for a picture or something, or maybe to feed them?) but the monkey grabbed her hair and wouldn't let go. somewhat funny, somewhat frightening.

it also took me back to costa rica when we visited a family who lived in the mountains by a river. they had 3 monkeys. the baby was sweet and loved to climb up and be held, but when you tried to out him down and walk away, he would go ape (hehehe)...it was also the first time i saw a Jesus lizard running across the river. they also taught me about cashews. in case you were unaware, cashews have a toxin called urushiol, so they must be roasted (but that has to be done outdoors because they give off a toxic gas). all that from a stuffed animal.

 then one of the boys said he was going to get shoes like mine-the 5 finger vibrams i had on today. well, that got me looking around at their shoes. i was wondering where all their shoes had walked. and then i looked at mine and decided mine have not traveled nearly as much as i was hoping they would. i originally got them to go out and enjoy the wild-which as of yet they have not, so i am looking forward to getting them initiated.

do not let anyone measure your effectiveness by some black hole of malarkey, instead measure effectiveness by how much of a difference you make in the lives of others!
jules