Living in Nashville: Weeks THREE, FOUR and FIVE

I know i'm super behind in updating this, but I've barely had time to breathe.

The last three weeks have been the most intense and stressful weeks of my life, but a completely irreplaceable experience. Nashville Teaching Fellows pre-service training is to learn how to be a teacher in 5 weeks. It's no joke, it's incredibly rigorous and it makes me want to sleep for 3 days straight.
Pretty much my days have been starting at 5:15am and ending at 11:00pm with little to no breaks. Our lunch break is literally our drive between teaching class and taking class, which means I might eat some chocolate chips and drinkable applesauce during the day. It's a lot of writing lesson plans, practicing teaching techniques, crying, and when all else fails- laughing at absolutely everything.

Now that we're getting close to the end our days are getting easier, thankfully.

Overall, teaching is really hard. Dealing with behaviors is exhausting, writing and preparing for lesson plans is exhausting. It's not nearly as glorious as I imagined, but it's twice as rewarding. When I get one kid to light up because he finally understands something he thought he couldn't, it's a highlight of my day. If I can get a kid who has a lot of behaviors to actually sit in his chair for an hour, it's an absolute miracle. I'm definitely taking the time to celebrate the successes, even if they're small, because some days that's all I got to feel good about.

I had one interview yesterday with a public charter school, it's a really serious academic model with about 200 students and 20 staff total. We'll see how it pans out, but i'm crossing my fingers that i'll have a job lined up by the end of the week.

Speaking of jobs, Cameron has been hired at Pollo Tropical, a mexican food restaurant here. He's doing a lot of prep work and putting meals together. He seems to like it, but he's looking forward to the possibility of being promoted to a managerial position at their new location which is opening soon. I'm really stoked for him and hope that opportunity works out.

Some other exciting things that we've done:

1. Saw our first fireflies!
    We went to a happy hour with some friends from NTF and they gave us a lesson in lighting bugs.  We both looked like children, it was a really exciting moment for us.


2. We went downtown, ate dinner at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and then walked around the Country Music Hall of Fame, doing the tourist thing.

3. Went for a walk on a trail in Antioch. We haven't gotten to spend a lot of time outdoors so we wanted to check out some local trails.

It's really getting hot and humid here. The forecast this week is lighting storms and 90 degree weather. It is cool to get the random showers throughout the week, i'm pretty sure it's rained more here this month than in Carlsbad this who last year.

We're still finding unfamiliar bugs in and around out apartment. Cameron is pretty sure he killed a Brown Recluse spider right outside our front door, which makes it really easy to sleep at night.
I also saw my first live cockroach in a bathroom at school. It was HUGE, I had to battle it so I could get  out of the door. I also screamed and yelled at it to move.


I think it's getting to the point where i've been away long enough that the homesickness is in full swing. Cameron is keeping me sane though, he's happy here so that keeps me happy.
I do miss the Carlsbad summer feeling, Vinaka, the Del Mar Fair, Vital, familiarity, and of course all our friends and family.
Despite all the homesickness, we're both doing well. We're not packing up our bags to come home quite yet.

We miss you guys!