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....)