New Year's Eve

I realize that for my kiwi readers, 2009 is already underway.  I was reminded of this at 6:57am when my cell phone rang and rang and rang until I finally woke up, realizing that the ring wasn't in fact part of my dream.... I missed the call.  It was Jude, presumably wishing me a Happy New Year from the other side of the world, as it was 3 minutes until 2009 by the clock on my phone.

In Minnesota, where I currently am (and have been since the 26th) visiting Grace, 2009 will begin in 8 hours, 1 minute and counting. :o)

Photo updates to come!

Hey Santa, can I borrow your coat?

In keeping with the tradition of posting about the weather, here's a tasty tidbit of trivia for you (how's that for alliteration?):

Early yesterday morning, December 22nd, 2008, Saskatchewan was colder than the North Pole.

THE NORTH POLE.

Yep, that sounds about right.

I was going to blog about how the weather is getting nicer....

.... but then I checked www.theweathernetwork.com and discovered quite the opposite:

Feels like -46C?  Welcome to the first official day of Canadian winter.  We're officially on holidays now until January 5th, which is exciting and much-needed.  It has been a very busy 4 months!  Our big Christmas concert was on Wednesday, and fortunately it went very well!  Of the 8 performing music groups we have at our school, I am in charge of 6 of them.  I have 4 bands, a choir, and a jazz choir.... extremely busy but very rewarding.  There are also 2 orchestra groups that another music teacher leads.  I had never organized a concert before, but it went very well and was well-received by the audience.  Now I'm exhausted and looking forward to the holidays to recuperate!

I'm heading to Saskatoon today to do some stocking stuffer shopping, and then before you know it it will be Christmas Eve.  I have big plans for Boxing Day that I can't share on this blog for fear of someone finding it before they should.... but don't worry, there will be a big update after the plan is executed!!!!  Hehehe, I'm so mysterious.....

I will update again with all of the well wishes and reflections on another year gone by.  In the meantime, I hope you friends in New Zealand are enjoying the sun for me.  I'll freeze a finger off for each of you. :op

Hey! New Zealand! How's the weather?

Better than over here, I hope!

If you can't read it, click to enlarge.  Yes, tonight as I write this it feels like -44C outside with the wind chill.

It's the most wonderful time of the year..... la la la la la la la la.......

Photo update

I realized that it has been a while since I did a photo update.  A lot has happened in the past week, and I figure a text update is also warranted.

The biggest news is that on Monday, Dec. 1st my family had to make the extremely difficult decision to have our oldest golden retriever, Sydney, put down.  She was 11 1/2 years old (we got her in the summer of 1997, when I was 12 years old and had just finished grade 6), and she had a very long, happy, and healthy life.  Her last few weeks of life were peaceful, although her body was shutting down on her quickly.  I don't think she was ever in pain though, which is a blessing.  Her last night at home was particularly special, as Karyn had driven in from Saskatoon and our whole family was together.  Syd had a little Christmas celebration where we let her eat dog treats directly out of the box (her face was buried in the box in pure delight.... so cute!), and she was even doing some of her tricks for Karyn because she was so excited that she was home.  After her little burst of energy, she tired out big time and had one last comfy sleep on her dog bed.  We took her to the vet on Monday morning, and then we spent the rest of the day together as a family.  Karyn and I both took the day off, as we really needed to have our time with Syd before she went.  It was a tough day, and a tough week, but we're adjusting to our new normal, and Riley is adjusting well now (although he was a bit out of sorts for a few days).

On a happier note, the video that I posted here on November 10th ended up winning me $500 NZ and a Kiwi Experience prize pack in the Kiwi Experience facebook competition.  I won the overall contest for the month of November (there are individual video, photo, and text winners that each receive a prize pack, and one overall winner who takes $500), so I'm pretty excited about the fact that my sky dive ($494) is all paid for 2010, with enough left over for a drink upon safe landing. :o)

Things are just chugging along at work, and things are busy these days as we're getting ready for our Christmas concert.  My choir has had 2 performances already at various events, and my senior band is playing at "Christmas at City Hall" next week, so things are in full swing around here.  I love my job and my students, but I will be very ready for the Christmas break when it rolls around in only 2 weeks!

And now for the photo update!  (Mostly) in order, here are some snapshots of my life from the past 4-5 weeks:

Playing with my new camera at the lake

Another shot taken using the digital macro feature

My beautiful Sydney enjoying a day at the lake

There's a reason why Saskatchewan license plates read "Land of Living Skies" (sunrise at the lake - November 1st) :o)

Another photo from the weekend at the lake

Catching up with my dear friend Jan Michael at the Saskatchewan Music Conference

My newly organized instrument storage room at school!

Another pretty sky - this time a sunset from my front door at home

Riley, Syd, and Gus on Syd's last night with us (Nov. 30th)

Karyn and I love our little girl!

Riley is a goof who gets too close to the camera (albeit with adorable results!)

Syd hanging out with dad and me just before we went out canoeing at the lake (Nov. 1st)

Beached as, bro!

Fish shared this with me on Skype tonight and I thought it was too funny not to post.  We are currently still on Skype (1 hour, 12 minutes, 14 seconds, and counting!) and she just heard me typing and said "You're blogged AS, bro!!!"  Haha.

Oh New Zealand.  How I miss you.

I forgot about posting videos to blogger.  I'm going to attempt it again to see if I'm doing it right - it has been so long that I actually forget what I did last time!  I seem to remember re-sizing the video, but I didn't do it with this one... hopefully it doesn't take 80 million years to load.  I figured out how to put videos into my iMovie projects, so I made a short little video montage of clips from the NZ south island trip:

So this week has been exceptionally out-of-the-ordinary.  Our school was struck by tragedy when one of our teachers lost her 16-year-old son in a car accident on his way home from school on Tuesday.  Shocking, tragic.... there are no words to describe how everyone feels.  That extreme low was followed by an extreme high on Thursday, when we had Jerry Goebel visit our school for our student retreat - he taught the girls songs and dances, did skits with them, and did a whole heck of a lot of motivational and inspirational speaking.  It was fantastic.  Then we had our own classes for sessions during the day, and we were given the freedom to come up with our own activities to supplement Jerry's sessions.  Sister Zelie and I had my grade 7 homeroom class, and we did an activity called "7 Acts of Intentional Courtesy" where each student came up with 1 for each day of the week.  Then we did the age-old "Warm Fuzzies" project where each student writes something nice about each student in the class, and at the end they have a page of anonymous "warm fuzzies" that they can decorate and take home to keep.  It was just what we needed at the end of an emotionally exhausting week.

I took Friday off for professional development, and I spent Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday in Saskatoon for the SK Music Conference.  It was awesome to see all of my other music teacher friends from around the province (it really is a small world in our profession), and I picked up some good ideas to use with my bands/choirs, and I also was reminded that I'm not alone in my frustrations or my joys.  It was good to be reminded of the fact that almost everything that I experience in my job, whether it's those hair-pulling moments of frustration (that I won't mention on a public blog) or the complete joy that comes out of a good rehearsal or a moment where you know you've made a difference in how a student understands something, etc., we're all in it together.  The triumphs and frustrations go part and parcel with the job, and this weekend we were able to gather as a group of a couple hundred music teachers to debrief, share ideas and stories, and learn from the masters in our profession.  It was awesome.

Now I'm back at home and am allowing myself to take the night off - I fully intend to watch TV, paint my nails, have a bath, and just relax and enjoy doing things for myself.  Ahhh. :o)

In blog friend news, my friend Marion is now in Korea teaching English for a year.  I've linked her blog to the right (and have paid tribute to an old inside joke a la "The Music Man" in the title of her blog), and I'm so looking forward to hearing about her Asian adventures over the next 12 months!

Also can't wait to see new pictures of Miss Charlotte as they appear on Fish and Sam's blogs.  She gets even more adorable with every new photo, if that's possible.  What a beautiful little baby girl! :oD

And with that, I'm out.  I'll try to blog more - I like reading friends' blogs, so I figure I should reciprocate.  Plus, it just feels good to write sometimes.  Love you guys!

HVHS reflection

It's 11:58pm on November 2nd, and so I have 2 minutes to post the following statement:

It has been exactly 1 year since I finished internship at HVHS.

Ok wait, not true... it's Nov. 3rd in New Zealand.  I tried.

Four Strong Winds.... 1 year ago....

Exactly one year ago today, I sat in the kitchen of a little cabin in Palmerston North, New Zealand with the wonderful Tommy P, strumming and singing and recording us singing "Four Strong Winds" at midnight on the little Mac computer that I had borrowed from Hutt Valley High School.... October 27th, 2007 (I know the date of this post will read Oct. 26th but it's the 27th in NZ so that's what I'm going by).  What I felt in that moment were simply feelings of contentment and pleasure over the fact that we were recording ourselves singing in harmony.  It wasn't until later that I realized how poignant the lyrics of the song were, and just how much that recording would mean to me after I left New Zealand.

So, it has been exactly a year since I saw Tommy for the last time.  I've thought of him probably every day since, and I've watched that video more times than I can count.  Tommy and keep in touch very regularly, and have plans to meet up again in a year and a half, back on that side of the world again.... and you can bet that there will be an updated recording or two, or twenty.  We will have new places to see, new songs to sing, and new memories to create.  But for today, on this one-year anniversary of the day we had to say goodbye, I am paying my respects to one particularly bitter-sweet memory from a beautiful day in my past.

Kei te aroha au i a koe, Tommy.  And I WILL look for you when I'm back your way....

I Googled "happy"....

..... and found this rather lovely picture:

I figured it would be better than telling you about the 70 playing tests that I administered this afternoon in only two 50-minute band classes and about how I'll be spending most of my weekend grading them, recording the grades into the computer program we use for reporting, entering report card comments for 108 band students, etc..... (yet somehow I managed to tell you this information anyway - how clever of me!).

Despite the apparent negativity of that last comment, I actually am doing quite well at work and am enjoying myself now that I've mostly settled into my job.  Teaching truly is full of ups and downs, but I've been having lots of ups lately and the downs are becoming few and far between.  It's exhausting, but rewarding.  Truly.  (And I realized just how exhausting it is last night, when I fell asleep at 9:25pm and slept straight through to 7:30 this morning.... gloriously refreshing!)

Whenever I've found myself getting overwhelmed with work at school lately, I've turned to planning for my next trip to New Zealand 2010.  So far the plan is to travel there at the end of June and return to Canada in mid-August; essentially I'll be spending my entire summer holiday over there.  I'm thinking that I'll do a Kiwi Experience tour of the north island, then do a self-guided tour of the south island with Jude (so we can head down to Dunedin to visit Julia).  Highlights to include: Jumping off of the Auckland Sky Tower, side trips from Auckland to Paihia and Cape Reinga, black water rafting and caving in Waitomo, skydiving in Taupo, revisiting the Zorb and Swoop in Rotorua, doing the Canyon Swing again in Queenstown, the Nevis Highwire bungy, Shotover Jet, etc. etc. etc...... I've got all of these ideas, and am now just figuring out how to save enough $$ to do it all!  :o)

So there's the update.  Life is chugging along as usual and the pace rarely slows enough for me to take a mental break for blogging (I always feel like the content of the posts will be super repetitive.... "today at school blah blah blah", etc.)...

..... although now that I mention it, I DO have a "today at school" story - today at school we had a pep rally for the volleyball teams, and each classroom was to create a cheer to present to the school.  There would be 2 winners (to receive 100 class points), 1 from each floor (junior, senior).  My homeroom class won the big honour for the junior floor, and the girls were all very excited!  They really gave it their all, and presented our cheer complete with pompoms and brightly coloured garb over their uniforms.

And with that, TGIF.  It's time for a break (and then it'll be back to the grind tomorrow!  Report card marks and comments are due Wednesday....)

Haircut!

Crazy!  I finally chopped it.  The "before" shot, and many "after" shots.... my head feels so much lighter, and my hair takes way less time to dry in the morning.  The braid that I'm holding in the first "after" picture will be donated to Locks of Love (through the Canadian Cancer Society) so that it can be made into a wig for a cancer patient.  I figured I didn't need it anymore, so it was only natural to give it to someone who can use it.  Kind of a warm fuzzy for me too. :o)

My head feels 5 pounds lighter!!!!

Picnik mania (and a HUGE congratulations!)

Ok, so first things first.  CONGRATULATIONS to Fishie and Sam who just had their brand new baby girl yesterday at about 12:45am New Zealand time.  SO EXCITING!!!!!  (Why the heck is this writing as though it's a big huge link?  Anyway....)  I can't wait to see pictures of the new baby, Miss C.A. Hall (Kirsten told me the name last night, SO perfect!).  And of course I'm glad that everyone is happy and healthy and doing just fine. :o)

And in other news (oh, there goes the link!), I am hopelessly addicted to the website Picnik.  Seriously.  Check it out here if you have a hankering for some easy photo editing.  My cousin got me into it and I've been pretty much unstoppable for the past 2 weeks.  I'm teaching the students in my Grade 10 (Year 11 in NZ) computer class how to use it, and they are just loving it as well.  So, since I'm long overdue for another update, here are a few pictures.  You've probably already seen most of them on Facebook, but here they are anyway.  Cheers!

On the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond

.... (a line from Loch Lomond, one of the pieces we're playing in Senior Band).

SOOOOO it has been forever and a day since I updated this thing.  I still check your blogs regularly, darling blogger friends, but I know I really haven't kept up here..... life is CRAZY.  Crazy crazy crazy.  If I can try to describe my life as of late (aka first year teaching, all day every day) in a few words or phrases, it would look something like this:

- busy

- exhausting

- exciting

- HUGE learning curve

- musically frustrating

- musically rewarding

- musically challenging ("Miss Campbell, how do I play high B on the clarinet again?"  "Miss Campbell, my trumpet valves are sticking."  "Miss Campbell, I don't know how to read music.")

- enlightening

- overwhelming

- stressful

- gigantic adjustment in every possible way

- fun

- empowering

- humbling

- etc. etc. etc.

So there you have it.  Life is dramatically different now that I have entered the life of a beginning teacher.  I teach students from grades 7-12 (or forms 2-7, for my New Zealand friends), in multiple subject areas (Science, Computers, Information Processing, Band, Choir, Vocal Jazz), and I have a grade 7 homeroom (form) class.  For the most part I have wonderful students who make me happy, make me laugh, make me think, and occasionally make me pull my hair out.  They're great.  The job is great.  My staff is AMAZING.  Life is good.

And I'm SO TIRED.  Haha.

There's the update.  I'll try to keep up with the blog as much as possible, but for my teacher friends out there, I'm sure you can appreciate the overwhelming schedule that your first year of teaching brings.... so, while I have good intentions of keeping up, my posts may still be few and far between.

In other news, I miss you NZ guys tons.  I made some phone calls the other day to some of my kiwi friends (Jude, Julia, Aidyn, Tommy, etc.), and hearing their accents again made me SO happy and warm and fuzzy on the inside.  When I get a spare moment (and when I have more than $11 to my name..... hurry up, pay day! haha) I will try to give some of you a call.  It'd be great to catch up, and I could really use a distractor in the midst of my lesson planning. :o)

Speaking of which, off I go!  I'm actually just going to chill for a while and then I'll get to planning.... and then to bed by 10 tonight, for sure!  I need SLEEEEEEP!!!!!

Love love love you guys!!!!  Arohanui!!!

Busy, busy, busy!

Ahh, the life of a teacher!  SO BUSY.  And I haven't even started yet!!!!

Times, they are a-changin'...

I suppose it has been a month since my last update.... but what a month it has been.

To make a very long, emotionally complicated story short, here is the first picture taken of Kendall and me as just friends.

Love you always, K.

What starts with an "s" and ends with a "lacker"...?

If you guessed Lauren and her blogging habits, then you are correct.  I have definitely not been slacking at work though... things have been very busy around here since the last update.  Everything is still going well though, and I figured it was about time for a photo update again.  So, in no particular order (because Blogger decided to jumble them up during the upload), here are some pictures from the last 3 weeks at IMC:

Kaleigh and me on Canada Day - July 1st (Week 4)

Kendall and me at the lookout in the Peace Gardens on our day off - Week 4

On our day off in Week 3 we went to Minot and I met his parents.  Here we're playing a fierce game of Bocce ball (Kendall and I won 15-13).

In Week 3, my campers convinced me to fit myself into one of the suitcase cubbies.  It actually wasn't too bad in there!

Tony, Tim, and Rob modeling the boxers Tony's wife bought for all of them... red with maple leaves and skulls.... ???

2 proud Canadians!  Jane and me - Canada Day, Week 4

Stephanie's name tag was misspelled, so I decided to take advantage of it by giving her nicknames that rhyme with StephaniNe every day.  So far she has been sanguine, turpentine, ball of twine, bovine, moonshine, clandestine, graphic design, and today she's sweet child o' mine.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Ginger (in her lovely slippers) cruelly withholding a Pixie Stick from a camper right before lights out in Week 2 or 3

Kendall posing on top of the lookout - Week 4 (extra points if you can give me the movie reference for this pose)

Ginger and me at the end of Week 2 or 3

Cory, me, Villi, and Tharon (sax quartet extraordinaire!) before performing at the dedication of the Alme International Arts Centre - Week 2

While I was having dinner with Kendall and his parents on our day off in Week 3, his dad pulled out an old C-Melody saxophone that Kendall's grandpa had owned.  It worked, and they had reeds.... it was the first time I had ever even seen one of them in person!!!!  I think the last one was made in the 1940s-ish.

It was a musical evening all around!

So there it is.  An update.  Finally.  Like I said, life is pretty busy around here and so I try to keep up on Facebook when I can (check there for more pics if you're interested), but I know the blogging has been a bit slack.  Despite the few bumps in the road along the way, things are going smoothly at IMC.... and time is FLYING.

Next stop, Paula's wedding in Winnipeg on Friday!!!!

IMC highlights

This is why I love this place.  Enough said. :o)