Gracias a Dios

Today was a good day in so many ways. I got a lot of stuff done at work, started a new phase of my job, and got my reimbursement checks from the Central Office and the IRS.

I have been teetering on the verge of financial ruin for awhile now, and getting those checks really made me feel better about life in general. I paid off two accounts and can make some payments on others now. I feel like a huge stone has been rolled off me.

At work, I got two sets of ID tests done and tidied up a bunch of loose ends. Tomorrow is Poetry Day (not a national holiday, but rather a weekly thing in my classes), and just knowing it's Poetry Day makes me feel happier about going to work tomorrow. We're doing a poem by Emerson in the 11th grade classes and the wonderful "Queen of the Blues" by Gwendolyn Brooks in AP. I am going to play Bessie Smith and introduce them to the real life Empress of the Blues while we're at it. It should be a good day.

I also got my 11th graders to actually talk today. This was a huge personal victory for me. I had reached the point where the cricket noises and the blank stares were about to kill me. We were going over a portion of "Self-Reliance" by Emerson, and they responded as I had always hoped they would. I had a feeling that good old Emerson would get them, but I wasn't sure until I saw them look up from the texts with that light in their eyes. I remember the first time I read "Self-Reliance". I think I underlined almost every other sentence. It still moves me. I'm a closet Transcendentalist, after all. (Can you be a closet Transcendentalist? Is that a paradox? It's late and I'm tired...cut me slack.)

The last good thing is that I am finally doing ESL again. I am our school's new ELL (English Language Learner, for those of you unfamiliar with the jargon) tutor, and I get to work with our small ELL population after school as much as I want AND get paid about $25/hour for it. How great is that? The one thing that I was missing in my current job was ESL. I have missed it so very much. Now, at least two days a week, and maybe more, I get to go back to my first love in education. It's not Japan, granted, but then again, I'm not an 18 hr. flight away anymore, either.

It was a good day, thank God. I needed one after the sorts of tiresome days I've had lately.