Alberta air...

has dried me out. My hands are cracking like crazy, I'm itchy everywhere, and my contacts feel like they're going to fall out only a couple of hours after I put them in! I knew it would happen because that's how it was before. I'm still waiting for my feet to start up (they haven't yet! and neither has Dale's, so I haven't gotten inadvertently scratched at night yet). Other than that, and the fact that I see my family every day (and Mark and John twice so far), it doesn't really feel like we're in Calgary. Work's the same. So's the kids. It's funny because when I was hired, the principal told me all this stuff about the kids at the school being motivated and very academic, but I have yet to see that because some of the students are straight up slackers. Well, it was only my third day today ;P The English classes are separated into more homogenous groups in terms of academic success. So there are two sets of English classes for each grade. I, apparently, teach the more "academic" kids; the ones who are average to above average (whatever that means). There's a kid in one of my classes getting 27%.

Pictures of my classroom and me hard at work at my desk (haha, more like posing for the camera!)

It's been a busy week and I'm thankful it's the weekend tomorrow! My brother came for a couple of days to visit and we had some after-dinner last night (I say 'after-dinner' because just a couple hours before we had dinner at Sushi Boat) at Joey's with Trace too. She is leaving for Asia next Friday. We got to spend some time together earlier this week and were able to talk about what has been going on with her. In a nutshell, lots has been happening. If you've been praying with me for her (and Rob) please continue to. Here's us siblings at Joey's:



If you didn't notice (but you probably did!), Marybeth shaved her head. She's gutsy and it's crazy but I think it suits her! It reminds me of Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. She said she wanted to get rid of all her dead hair. I told her she could have just grown out all the dead hair but I guess she really really wanted to get rid of everything, and fast!

Anyway, it's been a few days since I've been able to have some down time. I haven't been able to do my Believing God study yet (I'm on the last week!) so I think I'm going to do that now, and spend some time with the Lord.

...after I have some McD's fries courtesy of John David (the game's on right now and the Davids are over).

Later!