halfway through the week

and the end can't come soon enough.

but i did have some great conversations with some students today, which helped in reminding me why i'm there. my purpose and objective is to love and teach the kids.

however, I had a dinner date with tracy and laelia which took us to brooklyn and a walk along 4th ave. then we had pizza and gelato (mine was pistachio) while watching a movie and it was fabulous. maybe canceled out the walk, but what fun :)

with all the stress of the week, and also some sad things some students told me, i worked on angel by sarah mclachlan. a very sad song but one that i love to play and sing.

i want to stay in one of those quaint cottages next to the sea...

January 5th - the anniversary of Tim and Christine's wedding and a VERY stressful day at work. The 2nd day back was almost just as hard as the 1st...

I took my walk around the neighborhood again because I had to make 3 stops on the way home, and it was already 5:30 and I was SO tired. I wore a dress to school today, so I just threw on my Chacos and went. I was walking with my headphones in and near the end of my walk, I realized that a car was pulling up next to me. A guy was concerned and offering me a ride. Never have I had that happen...but it was hard to tell if he was concerned or being kinda creepy. Seemed like a blend of both, but I guess nice nonetheless.

I practiced on my Navajo flute for around a half hour today. It was fun playing it - I hadn't seriously in a while.

oh my gosh...so tired

So the first day back to school was more exhausting than I thought, and I have a fear tomorrow is going to worse :( However, I'm trying to praise God for being much stronger than I and ask that he dispose of that strength on my fatigued self.

In light of this, I just walked around the block when I got home at 5:30. The sky illuminated many lovely, pink cirrus clouds as the sun set.

I ran through "Last Clock on the Wall" by Joe Purdy on my electric guitar (because my fingers are KILLING me with playing so much - the electric was the only thing I could handle. A good sign!)

day 3

Walk: Had the most AWESOME latte at Luce then walked around campus. One of the trees' leaves had turned yellow. It looked so beautiful in the midday sun.

Play: Worked on "The Cure for Pain" by Jon Foreman again.

day 2

Walk: Moriah and I walked around Himmel Park as the sun was setting - lovely. There were three boys in a wooden wagon riding down Hippie Hill :)

Play: Moriah bought a ukelele today! It's from Portugal, is handmade, and sounds absolutely fabulous. We played "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson together, which is played on the ukulele. I sang and added in notes from my mandolin and guitar :)

day 1

Walk: Mt. Lemmon
I took Bella on a short hike with me this morning. She was so great. Sometimes she gets clingy and protective and walks very close ahead of me, which makes it hard to go anywhere. But today she kept walking ahead (but not too far, and stopped whenever I called her), and walked in an excited, encouraging, cheerleader sort of way. Rather a nice bonus given that I haven't gone hiking in quite some time and was sucking air. I would take her on that trail last year, so it was fun to go with her again, though terribly windy today.

Music: Jon Foreman on guitar



gotta love the cello :) i was having a rough day thinking about stuff and God used this to speak to me while i was hiking, especially the first verse

Ireland pic of the day:

resolutions of a new year...

Generally, I find New Year's resolutions rather stupid. I mean, if you haven't managed to motivate yourself to do something within the past year, what are the odds you're going to do it just because the calendar year changed? However this year, I thought well, what the heck - I'll just start something - at least I'm excited about it!

I thought I'd combine my ideas into one compact, perhaps achievable, plan. So here it goes:
I love to walk...or I should say taking walks. I love the time to think, take in the beauty around me and just chill. However, I rarely go on walks here. I love the desert, but there's something much more enjoyable about walking among trees. So...

New Year's Resolution #1: Walk everyday when I get home from school and write one sentence on here about it. Just a simple sentence to claim that I did it.


I also want to be playing more. Not that I don't ever play, but I always wondered how much difference it would make if I played everyday. So after I get home...

New Year's Resolution #2: Pick up one of my instruments and play something...anything...and if I just run through one song it will take 3 minutes at most.

And then if that wasn't enough (and it won't be), I have the external motivation of a daily calendar. One of my long time dreams is to go stay in Ireland for as long as I could afford. With teaching, I would love that to be an entire summer to just sit in pubs, backpack around the country, and play my mandolin. So to motivate myself to save and sacrifice for it, I bough a daily calendar with photos of Ireland, so when I walk and play, I can reward myself with flipping the calendar and seeing my new beautiful picture of the day. Maybe it will work :) if not, well, it's ok....

So here's the calendar!