Rocking that *International* Paradise

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I stepped off the plane into icy Wisconsin weather for the first time.  “You are going to be so cold , it’s going to feel so strange to you!”  But my first breath of winter air was not that shocking.  In fact, as I took my first gulp in the parking lot of the Minneapolis airport, all I thought was, “Tastes like home .”  Rather than experiencing reverse culture shock, I simply feel like I’ve stepped out of the time-warp fantasy world of Puerto Rico and back into real life.  Everything here seems real now.  It is all (more or less) exactly as I have left it.  The smell of a wood fire woke me this morning, and the sun glinting off a light snowfall out my bedroom windows looked just as it should.  My bedroom at my parents’ house is the same—a time capsule of my life from 8 th grade through my college graduation.  And now, suddenly, it has become shockingly real and clear; Christmas is in one week .  When on earth did THAT happen?  Time to shop, ba

Sometimes as I think back on the year so far, it still strikes me as just weird that I am actually a teacher.  In the day-to-day, it’s just life.  I plan lessons, grade papers, look back and let students know what they can do to raise their grades, and sometimes hand out detention slips.  But looking at the big picture, I’m shaken sometimes.  I’m a real, live teacher.  It’s not just me that’s affected by that.  Even after this year, I will always be my students’ 8 th grade (or 7 th grade) English teacher.  I think we all have those teachers who we remember—not as being our favorite teachers in the world, but simply as being good teachers.  People we learned from, who led classes we didn’t dread going to, who taught at least one or two lessons that stuck in our heads over the years.  For me, there are several.  6 th grade Social Studies, 7 th grade English, my 5 th grade teacher (who coincidentally ran into me when I was in my early 20s and working at an appliance/electronics st

I’ve been failing in the blogging world these past few weeks.  Why?  I can’t really say.  It’s not that I haven’t been doing interesting things (or having interesting things happen to me).  It’s not that I’ve been too stressed or busy to write.  I just…haven’t felt like it.  So, I apologize.  And here’s a re-cap of my last 2 weeks. My parents and sister came to visit over Thanksgiving!  We did and saw a LOT together (enough for 4-5 blog posts!  Why didn’t I write about that?).  We hit up the beach, stayed in an awesome mountainside B&B, kayaked in the bioluminescent bay in Fajardo, hiked in the rainforest of El Yunque (and got rained on, of course), and spent some time sightseeing in Old San Juan.  Sisters, together again!   No beach day with my sister would be complete without a sand castle... and her posing next to it. Ready for rain in El Yunque! La Mina Falls.  We opted not to swim that day... After my full 9 days off of school, I headed back to my student