Internship!

Things seem to be falling into place. I have an apartment to live in when I move, I am registered for classes, and... I got the internship with the Big Sister Association! Now I just need to find a job. And figure out just when it is that I expect to sleep... Rugby is seeming more and more unlikely when I move. I really want to do some other active things with the limited free time I might come up with. I want to go kayaking (I've never been!), climbing... get a bike... maybe I could learn to snowboard!

Or, y'know, I'll be so busy doing school and work that I won't have time for anything else.

Regardless, I'm getting ready to leave. Just a little over a month to go...

Not Ready

I'm not ready to say goodbye. The first of the goodbyes is this week. Then four weeks left of work and two more weeks in the northwest before packing up the car and driving east. Leaving is going to be hard. This is the first place i've lived on my own. It took some time, but I've come to call this place home. It's almost time to leave home again. I can't help but wonder, will I continue to think of this place as home? Will I make my way back? Or will I continue to make a new home every couple of years? For how long will it be important to me that I am able to fit all of my possessions into my car? I'll just have to wait and see...

Course Crisis

Registration for courses opened on June 2nd. I was kind of distracted by various things in life and forgot about that for a few days. When I went to register for classes on June 6th, I figured I might have to settle for not the best times, but thought that I'd be able to work it out okay. What actually happened? I tried to register for courses and discovered that every section of every course I'm supposed to take my first semester is closed. Yup, that's right, I can't register for any of my courses because they're all full! Now, of course, after a stopped freaking out a little I realized that they have to let me into courses - I mean they accepted me into the school and they're trying to get me a field placement, obviously I have to be able to take classes. Still though, kind of weird, don't you think? I left a message and emailed someone at the school but since it's the weekend I will have to wait until monday. Wish me luck...

Beer Olympics!

My teammates and I are the reigning roboboot champions in the beer olympics! Jeannie and Anita, co workers of mine, along with Caitlin, a friend from NY, joined me in some olympic fun. We had a western theme for our team, and I found some pretty sweet accessories at a costume store. These accessories included animal print cowboy hats, sheriff stars, squirt guns, cap guns, and a whip. I was pretty psyched that I actually managed to put together a team without rugby players. Non-rugby friends, who knew?

Tough Job

You know that you have a tough job when a police officer tells you so.

Today was a good day. We went on an outing to an arcade type place that is kind of like an older kids' version of Chuck E. Cheese's. I played a couple of games of laser tag with the kids and by the second one wasn't worried about what they would do. They almost seemed like normal kids. I saw some great coping skills and friendship skills and a bunch of kids with big smiles on their faces. This was not a normal day at work for me.

After we returned to school and it was time for the kids to go out to their rides, one of them started to have a hard time. This is not that unusual unfortunately. Many of the kids do not want to go home at the end of the day. This situation, however, had to do with a fishing pole. He wanted us to give him permission to bring his fishing pole to school next week. He was not satisfied with the response he received and proceeded to leave the classroom and go from a boil to a full explosion. At the point that I became involved, primarily as a spectator, he had already been contained on the floor in the hallway by five staff members. The plan in place by other people involved in his care is that when he blows out, the police are called and he is admitted to an inpatient unit. Since this is not normally our first course of action, I have never actually seen this occur. Students have been taken out by police before, but I've never witnessed it. Within seconds of the police arriving and handcuffing him, he went from raging, rambling, and banging his head on the floor to crying and asking to please just be allowed to take his ride home. His first response to the police and the handcuffs was to say despairingly, "No, not again..."

I deal with crazy things every day. The frequency of some types of events starts to make them have less impact on me. It's amazing what we can get used to when we try. Every now and then though something makes me stop. This was one of those moments.