#$@%&*!

I am starting out another day in the Portland airport bright and early. I got here at 5:15 am after crashing in my friend Kate's room at the Sheraton. My bag apparently made it on a 5:30 am flight to Newark, but I unfortunately was not on that flight. I also will not be flying in to Newark I don't think. This is assuming I get out of here at all.

My spirits were pretty high yesterday despite the continual delaying of my flight. It wasn't until I had been in the airport for 12 hours and then they canceled the flight that I really lost it. I tried to find my bag, but the baggage claim area was a zoo, so I eventually gave up and called my friend Kate. She let me stay with her and she also was pretty miserable because she has been trying to get home for days. A shower and some food made the outlook a little brighter, but I don't think I'll be ok until I'm actually home. Hopefully today is that day.

I have three flights today, one to JFK via San Francisco, one to LaGuardia via Denver and one staight through to Newark. My plan is to try for the earliest one because getting out of Portland seems wise.

Yuck.

I hate this city.

Fricking Portland

I have never seen a city that is so completely unable to deal with snow.

I may or may not make it home for Christmas...it's beginning to look a little dismal. I was supposed to be home first thing tomorrow morning.

I won't be.

I've spent the last several hours looking for flights and crying. I hate the west coast, I hate continental airlines.

I hate Portland.

I just want to go home.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Currently reading: Seeds of Hope, Six minute reflections for Advent

Yesterday was our first real snowfall of the winter, and boy is it cold here in Yakima. The weather for today is 2 degrees. Needless to say, I am relatively miserable. But it is really pretty, and I did get to mass and back successfully, which was good. I should hopefully be a decent snow driver by the time I leave Yakima. It snows a lot during the winters here. I was more than a little surprised that they haven't plowed or anything yet.

I went and got my stitches out yesterday, which was a relief. I still have to keep the hand clean and dry, but hopefully it will heal quickly. Kudos to those who got the "Babe" reference in the last entry's title. It was far from a tragic day and not serious at all, but I thought it was funny.

Our community has hosted two large dinner parties in the last two weeks, and while it has made us keep our house spectacularly clean, it has also been a huge headache. I'm glad that this week we have few parties, but none here, so we can relax a little more. I can't believe how close Christmas is! This time next week, I'll be in New Jersey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (In case you can't tell, I am more than a little excited about this.)

I may or may not be dancing at the middle school drama class performance tomorrow, which could be interesting. The drama teacher has decided that I am wonderful and amazing and she is determined to get me involved in theatre here in town. While I would love to do some acting or dancing or singing, I also know that teaching takes a lot of time. But it's still funny to me how she is resorting to writing me into "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" which my seventh graders are performing.

Hopefully I will see you all soon soon soon!

A Tragic Day

Currently Reading: Where's God When It Hurts? The Lamb's High Feast

So I just got home from the program's winter retreat. We spent the weekend in the mountains near White Pass, and last night it snowed a few inches up there. We had beautiful weather and a great time. The retreat was a good opportunity to reconnect with some of the people I haven't seen since this summer and also to just get away from school for a little bit.

Our community was the host community for the weekend, so there was a lot of planning to be done on our end of things. We had to cook dinner for about thirty people on Friday and it went surprisingly well. We had three different kinds of soups and some salads, and everyone seemed to really enjoy the food.

Unfortunately, in preparing said soups, I had a disagreement with the knife I was using to carve a pumpkin. I wanted the knife to cut apart a piece of the pumpkin, but the knife preferred my left thumb. After it wouldn't stop bleeding for two hours, I had to go to the hospital to get stitches. It was my first hospital visit since I was born, and while it was smooth and the people were nice, it's not an experience I would like to repeat. So for the next ten days I have to keep my left thumb dry and protected until I can get the stitches out. It is currently very difficult and very painful to write anything. School should be interesting.

Only two weeks til I come HOME!

an advent miracle...

Ok, so the sheer multitude of updates is a little ridiculous, but this is important.

We are having all the people in our program up to Yakima this weekend, including the ones from Salt Lake, so we have been cleaning like demons. I mean REALLY cleaning. Moving furniture, cleaning under things.

So two months ago I lost my flashdrive. It had all my coursework on it, lesson plans, two completed novel drafts. I cried for a week after the tragedy.

Last night we moved the couch, and guess what had been under it for two whole months!

I cried again, said some things that shouldn't be written or said by a Catholic school teacher, and then proceeded to me SUPERhappy.

I thought you should all know.

Let the countdown commence!

So today is officially day one in the plan to get my life back on track. For advent I am reading no novels, only spiritual stuff...or at least attempting to read spiritual stuff. Obviously I'll read the stuff I have to for school as well. I am also making an effort to keep my area at school and my area at home very clean. I think the mess was depressing me. I'm also going to try my best to start writing again.

When I got back to Yakima from Thanksgiving, there were so many packages waiting for me. I had one from home, one from Kentucky, and one with my new teacher edition of the Language Arts book! It's kind of depressing, I was almost most excited about the grammar book. I showed the kids today that I had this great new book and they weren't nearly as impressed as they should have been.

Sometimes I forget how young seventh graders are. I attempted to do "Advent Angels" with them, which is a tradition we had at my old school when I was their age. It involves doing secret nice things for people, and basically just being a good person. Well the one class was really good at this and really cute and excited. The other class turned typical seventh grade on me and didn't want to do the person they had, because they had "issues". I told them to grow up.

Well I'm off to have my coffee and get ready to go!