Checking off the list

Today I woke up in a better mood than yesterday but still not great. I wasn't terribly optimistic about how school would go, especially after how yesterday ended.  However, I tried to pretend that it would be okay. I had a flash of inspiration on how to engage my students more in math--PowerPoints, whispering, and songs.  I used several PowerPoints today and I definitely employed whispering, which was followed by station activities where they answered similar questions that most of them got wrong on the test yesterday.  It made all the difference!

Yesterday's math lesson=I didn't know what was wrong with me as a teacher and why I was teaching third grade
Today's math lesson=why didn't I do this before, this was awesome, but I can't use it too much or else it will get old

After school I looked up some fun multiplication facts songs that I'm going to play for my class the next few weeks to help them learn their times tables.

Not only was figuring out how to engage my students a success, I also got to watch an episode of The West Wing with Cody (a show we love!  We started in when we were in DC and now it's a friendly reminder of where we lived all summer, helps us keep national events in mind, and connects us to incredibly like-able TV characters), practiced my violin, and went for a run.

I'd say that the mental list I made for myself, thinking it was impossible this morning, has now become finished. And I feel great about that!

"You are buried in the past...It is time to move on"

Those of you who read my post about Jane Eyre, are here for the next installment: Charlotte Bronte herself.

Labor Day weekend, I started and finished The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James.  As much as I felt like I knew Charlotte Bronte before reading this book, I now realize that I was probably missing a big part of her--her actual personality.  Yes, she is similar to Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, but I think there was more to her than I realized.  One of the biggest things that I learned about and that I'm grateful to know about now was her growing friendship and eventual love for her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls.

The reason why I'm especially grateful to know more about that relationship is because of what I had read previously about how she hadn't really liked him, she'd been in love with her professor, and she'd turned down other offers for marriage, and then looking at her age, 37, when she got married, I always had the thought, "I hope she didn't just marry him out of convenience," even though I know that she wrote to a friend after she was married that she felt her heart was knit with her husband's.

To delve into those concerns a little bit further:
She hadn't really liked him--That is true.  She found him close-minded in certain areas. However, she did acknowledge his generous nature to others and his indispensable service for her father as his curate.  She also reacted towards him based on incorrect information she had about him. Once she realized the truth of what really happened, she allowed herself to start to become friends with him.

She'd been in love with her professor--That is true.  But that was 10 years before she got married.  She used descriptions of M. Heger to create Mr. Rochester and M. Paul Emmanuel. However, she buried (literally) that part of her life in order to let herself live.  I was particularly touched by a dream she recorded after her sisters had all passed away and they visited her in a dream, telling her that they were dead and couldn't live, yet there she was living and yet she was living as one dead. She needed to leave the past in the past and move on to the living and real. Her sisters told her that she was buried in the past, she needed to move on and leave Belgium behind.  I have continually thought about this statement and experience because I wonder, as one who likes to look back at experiences in my life, do I live to much in the past? Am I leaving behind my Belgium (whatever it may be--past hurts, feelings of inadequacy, etc.) and moving on so that I can live and develop fully in the time that I have been given in this life?  No, I don't have a secret old love like Charlotte did for her professor, but just like Charlotte, perhaps I, too, need to find more ways to live in and appreciate the present.

She'd turned down other offers for marriage--That is true. This one always intrigued me because on the life lines in the beginning or backs of books written by Charlotte, it mentions those other offers of marriage and I always wanted more information about them.  Well here is some information: One of the marriage proposals was in a letter, the other was someone she didn't know but assumed she would want to get married since she wasn't married yet, rejected a marriage proposal from a man in her publishing house who she knew she wouldn't really suit, and then she first rejected her husband's proposal because her father was against it, but later accepted it when she decided to live and give him a shot.

It wasn't that she just "gave in".  She really became friends with Arthur and while she couldn't say she loved him when they got married, the respect and friendship she had for him turned to love as she got to know him better, saw him with his family, and he was able to freely show how much he loved and adored her.

What is most tragic to me, is that she died while she was pregnant, probably because she just had horrible morning sickness.  After being married for nine months, and being happier in those nine months than she had been in years (and feeling a peace in her life that she had never felt before), she died.  That is so sad.

I hope that someday I'll get to talk with Charlotte Bronte (fun note: her last name is pronounced "Brunty"--when her father came from Ireland to England, he was able to write his last name--Brunty--however he wanted, and he tried to make it look more elegant by spelling it with an o and with the e and double dots; but it's just pronounced Brunty).  Her books have changed my life. Learning about her life has added to my life, as well.

Also here are the two photographs that Charlotte took with her husband during their honeymoon tour:

The bearded man

The day of Cody's graduation from BYU was the day he stopped shaving for about a month.  So here is him on August 16:

At first I didn't think that I would like his beard. I've never really found them to be particularly attractive on men. I always thought they would be scratchy and annoying.  However, after the first few days, I found that I actually liked my husband with his beard. I thought he looked handsome in a different way than he's handsome when he's clean-shaven.

We joked and were serious about how he would shave his beard when he had his first interview.  Well, his first interview was a phone interview so he technically didn't need to shave.  But he had his first "I'm really serious about this and this is a job that I know I'm interested in" in-person interview last Friday. So, Thursday night, he decided that it was time to shave. Why? Not necessarily because it was his first interview, but because we had decided he'd shave his beard off after a month and it would be weird to go to the interview with a beard, then if they decided to do a follow-up interview or hire him and then he was clean-shaven, that might look or seem weird.

So here are the before and after pictures of him shaving on Thursday night.

What have I learned? I've learned that if my husband wants to grow a beard again in the future, that I'll be fine about it, I'll probably like it again, and it really isn't as big of a deal as I thought it would be.

Last year and this year

I think that perhaps because I am a school teacher, my New Year's resolutions begin in January and resurface (or I make new goals) in August or September when school starts again.  Last year, my goals for the new school year consisted mainly of building up my running so that I could run for 10 miles before my birthday in October.  I made that goal.  After achieving that goal, I made several other goals for school that I won't go into.

This year, I guess I'm feeling more able (or more lacking in previous habits so I want to do better), so my goals are not to run 10 miles or even a mileage goal, but merely to run or exercise 2-3 times a week, reread the Book of Mormon, and play my violin regularly again.  I've been fulfilling my last goal by joining the American Fork Symphony.  So now, instead of getting up on Saturdays and running like I was doing a year ago, I'm getting to the junior high by 8 and rehearsing for two hours on Saturdays.  The pieces we're playing for our first concert are:

(non-video form: Symphonie espangole, 1st movement by Edouard Lola, Capriccio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakov, Slavonic March by Tchaikovsky, Pavane pour une infante defunte by Ravel, Harry Potter Symphonic Suite by John Williams arranged by Jerry Brubaker, and Berceuse and Finale (from "Firebird Suite") by Igor Stravinsky arranged by Merle J. Isaac). I'm playing in the second violin section and it's so fun to be playing in an orchestra again, since I haven't done that in four years.  

Violin, running, and French were all very important to me in high school.  They were still important in college but in different ways: I participated in the non-audition orchestra for three semesters my first three years, I minored in French studies, and I made sure that I ran at least once a week, usually on Saturdays before cleaning my apartment.  Now I'm slowly bringing them back into my life again in more quantity post-college.  I have French Club at school, running 2-3 times, and now orchestra.  Perhaps next year I will do more with French than just French Club; we'll see.  

Counting blessings

1. I went out for a run tonight and ended up running 4.67 miles with little problem (my knees started getting sore near the end).

2. A friend's third grade class is going to be pen pals with my third grade class (talk about having a motivation to write!).

3. I have the next two weeks planned for school (except for math...)!

4. We had pizza for dinner and I love pizza.

5. I'm doing benchmarks with my students tomorrow which means that I get to meet with every student individually and listen to them read. I love that!

6. I get to go to the Relief Society meeting with my sister in three weeks.

7. Cody and I will be getting together with some of our friends on Saturday for dinner or lunch and going to the temple.

8. I slept really well last night.

9. I'm feeling sort of organized with my new calling at church (Primary secretary--Primary is the children's organization in the LDS church for those who don't know), which is saying a lot since that is basically all that my calling means I need to be.

10. Beautiful sunset tonight that I got to watch appear as I went on my run.

11.  Thinking about how one of these days (soon...) I'll write about how I'm in a community orchestra and read a fantastic book that I think about all the time now.

A small Bollywood problem

So I think I have a problem...

During my students' library time today the only thing I wanted to listen to in my room as I got ready for them to return and for French Club after school, was:

And I played it as my French Club students came in. And after French Club as I was cleaning up.

Now I'm listening to:

I hope that Cody and I can get Jodhaa Akbar at some point. I really like this movie. We're also hoping to buy Lagaan sometime, as well.  Cody likes that movie better. It has awesome music too, so I'm fine with it.