Octombre

One of the reasons I like living in Gunnison comes from the laid back attitude. We don't have the rush of a city, only the rush of our many responsibilities keeping us busy. The last few weeks of my life have been busy. Nothing really substantial on their own, mostly just school stuff in fact. I have been coaching a few debaters. I got three students to sign up for Lincoln Douglass (the debate I did in high school). I am finding out that I am out of practice, but still know how to speak my mind. I might try it more often.
Kassie and I started taking a Spanish class at the high school. Our local teacher teaches once a week for eight weeks (just in time to get over for basketball season because he's the coach). Already we've learned a lot. In fact we read the first chapter of the Spanish Book of Mormon and we were able to understand it with just a little help from the English version. Exciting!
Kassie is also 10 days away from leaving on her mission. We're both freaking out a little about what needs to happen before she leaves, but we're working through it. I got her to help me clean the garage yesterday. It's beautiful. Recently the edges have been creeping closer and closer to our cars. We had to squeeze in and out of vehicles, and my bike was parked outside. I'm happy to say there is plenty of room for all now, even the bike. I was really worried about cleaning the garage by myself. There is no way I would be able to put everything where it goes because I don't have a Brown gene to know where everything should go. We spent the rest of the day inside. Kassie went through enough mail to last a life time while I did laundry, cleaned the fridge and microwave, and got bedrooms ready for the Brown family coming next weekend for Kassie's farewell. We cleaned from 9 to 9 and it shows. I woke up this morning a little sore and it took some time to figure out why. House work sneaks up on a person that way. We only have the basement left and I'll feel good about living in the house alone after all is clean. That means I'll only have my own messes to deal with I guess. I'll finally see just how clean or cluttery I really am, but mostly I'm going to miss Kassie a lot. Though, I'll leave my ode to Kassie blog for latter. I still have 10 days to figure this out.
School is going well. The speech team, yearbook staff, and creative writing and arts club are keeping me plenty busy. I hardly have time to grade any papers, but somehow I assign them anyway. This year is going pretty well. I somehow worked it out for my reputation to change. Instead of being the young, fun teacher, I've turned into the teacher who expects a lot- a reputation that takes years to build. I'm pretty excited about that change. It means people are finally taking me seriously. I feel good and we're a quarter of the way through almost. Plenty of drama is yet to come my way I'm sure. I'm sure I'll post pictures from Kassie's farewell. It will be my last photo opp. Until then . . .