Week 1 of Teaching

    First I want to state that I did not realize how exhausting teaching is.  I love it and I am happy with my choice for a career, but I have been completely drained all week.  The first day or two I observed and just talked with Dr. Mills about teaching and what all I needed to do.  I got up in front of all of the classes and told them a little bit about myself and then had them all stand up and tell me their names and where all they had lived.  Many of the kids have lived in numerous countries and states.  It is funny how literal middle schoolers are because when i was telling them I drive a 76' Monte Carlo, and it is a boat I think some of them literally thought I drove a boat haha.  The kids are great so far and very gracious.  I know I am going to love them all and be sad by the time I leave.
    On Wednesday and Thursday I taught my mini-lesson over the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.  You definitely learn more teaching something 4 different times and having to research it.  It went well for my first time out and Dr. Mills even left me by myself with the class for 30-40 min and everything went ok.  I am learning a lot from Dr. Mills and he is more worried about me becoming a great teacher and not so much about my content.  The content I need to learn on my own and he is teaching me how to teach.  He has had about 20 student teachers so there is no one better to learn from.  Although I still need to earn the kids respect and love I feel like we are already headed in the right direction.
  On Tuesday i got to help out with the volleyball club and had a blast! The girls are so cute!  What I love the most is their desire to learn and grow.  Poor girls some of them are so confused because they have never seen a real game of volleyball played in their life.  Wednesday I played volleyball with the teachers and had so much fun!  They are all so welcoming and it is a nice stress reliever.  So that is a rundown of my first week of student teaching.  I still have a long ways to go but it was a good start.

P.S. sorry if there are grammatical errors I don't have too much time to edit everything :)  

                                 Here is the sign a couple of the students made for me on the first day :)

London Day 2- January 30th

   London day two!  The second day in London we rode the same bus from the base to the middle of London.  We had decided to go ahead and ride the hop on hop off bus again so we wouldn't have to pay for another mode of transportation.  However as we get to the bus stop Kayln realized she had lost her key to open her purse haha.  Several of the girls are rightly worried that they will get pick pocketed so they got some locks to made it harder for people to steal from them.  However, this ended up being a problem because Kayln's bus pass and all her money were in her purse locked up.  So me and Gwyn go back with her to retrace our steps in an attempt to locate the key.  Like in most cases we were not successful.  Gwyn ended up breaking into her purse for here with not too much damage.  Then we start walking back to the bus stop and after about 30 min Kayln starts laughing.  It just so happened that she had put the key between her tights and her jeans so after walking for awhile it had worked its way down into her boot!  Needless to say we laughed for a good 5 minutes.
  After that fiasco we climbed up the London Tower bridge and got to walk across the top and look out over the river.  The rest of the day we spent trying to make it to the English museum, which was a must on my list because I wanted to see the Rosetta Stone!  We went ahead and got a day pass for the Underground and got out at Kings Cross train station really quick to see the Harry Potter 9 3/4 platform. It was a little bit of a disappointment because it was under construction but we are in Europe so that is going to happen.  Then we finally reached the museum and had time to see all the highlights.  The museum was beautiful in itself but it also had some great works of art and we needed an entire day to see it all.      
   Later Gwyn, Kayln, and I headed back to meet up with the other girls.  All of us met up a a cute pub called the King's head.  It was a quaint English pub with a nice place to sit and eat.  We got to eat some good food then headed back to the tour bus.  That was the festivities for our first weekend in London !