Ah, yes. The interweb.

So I didn't follow through with the whole "use this to record and reflect on my experiences in my first year of teaching" like I had originally planned... oh well.

It is now a few scant weeks before the end of the school year, and things are slowly winding down. My last major event, the spring concert, is this weekend. I'm nowhere near as worried about this performance as I was any of our previous concert outings. My only real point of concern is for my high school band, which I won't see again in full until Saturday due to AP testing and other end-of-the-year goings-on.

I'm faced with making plans for the summer... for the first time in a long time, I don't really have anything big planned. It seems like the last five years' summers have been dominated by school, sandwiches, and choral tours. This is probably not a bad thing.

So in closing, I'd like to dedicate this update to the EDMC. You're welcome.

Camp, In-Service, and a close call...

I'd like to publicly thank one of my coworkers for intervening in an otherwise frightening situation.

Had his efforts not prevailed, I would be teaching the grade 9 girls Bible class (which is about Women's Issues - we're not just talking their role in the church)

Yikes. Instead, I will be teaching the grade 8 girls.

Camp went well. Musically, the group came together very quickly toward the end. Marching isn't as solid as I would have liked it to be, but they'll get there. We are in the middle of in-service this week, and classes begin in earnest next Monday.

Also, my car is (somewhat) clean(er) now.

An open letter to tomorrow

Dear tomorrow,

Would you mind holding off for about a week?

Thanks a million,
AJP

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

So things are different.  Next month, I begin my post as director of bands at Central Arkansas Christian School in Little Rock, Arkansas. This will effectively begin my official teaching career, so I think this would be a wonderful way to share my first-year experiences and observations.  That being said, I'm going to make a small effort to dress this thing up a bit, as soon as I figure out exactly how to do that.  I suspect it will involve some XML foogoomagooh, which may prove to be a daunting task.

This post is also to serve as a test of the Miracle of the SMTP Server, which turns any normal email client into a blog-posting utility.

More later.  Right now, it's off to the foogoomagooh.

TODAY'S VOCABULARY WORD:  fooboomagooh n.  a feat of technologically wizardry involving coding, markup languages,  80-lb. reference books on said coding and markup languages, and lots of Jolt Cola.

United States: This is the end of the road, Galvetron!

And... we're back.

The final concert went decently, a lot of people cried, then we flew to Newark. I spent the afternoon in New York City because we had a ridiculously long layover, and enjoyed:

• immediately after walking out of Penn Station, seeing a car with a Polish license plate
• yelling the polish words for "Good Morning" at the driver of the car with the Polish license plate
• him yelling something back in Polish
• almost playing Nertz in Times Square
• Eating cheesecake at Roxy's
• observing that Times Square is the most delightfully A.D.D. place in the world

Then we flew to Little Rock and my car wouldn't start and we jumped it off and I went to see the family.

Coming up: pictures!

Ireland: Travel day!

We left Aberdeen this morning, rode the bus forever, then got on a boat for a little while, then rode the bus for more forever and now we're in Dublin. I managed to pass the time pretty well: played two games of Spades, which were both lost in glorious fashion (scores: -410 to 410 on one game and on the other, we never got above 20 points), and watched the latter two Back to the Futures. I was thinking about it (I had time) and I believe that there is still a Delorian time machine hidden in the caves at the end of the third movie that they didn't account for. Perhaps they were leaving it open for a fourth movie... idunno.

So I stayed with a Price family a few days ago. This particular Mr. Price was a Knight Templar, and it was hard to follow exactly what all that means. But he has lots of paintings by a local artist, including one of his house, and lots of fancy medallions and a sword that he was eager to show us. Best I can tell, we're not related.

Dublin is our last stop on the tour. We fly back to the states Thursday. We're flying into Newark where we have a forever-long layover, so a bunch of us are going to New York City (New York City?!) for the afternoon. Then it's back to Beautiful Searcy, Arkansas, Dallas, and Monroe for the summer.

I better get back to the hostel before curfew... more tomorrow.

Coming up: My last Chorus concert ever!

Scotland: It's pretty nice here.

Another time-crunch situation lends itself to yet another LONG STORY SHORT:

The scenery in Scotland is simply a m a z i n g.

And we have two more concerts, one of which is in about two hours at the Aberdeen Music Hall.

That's it for now!

Coming up: Actual stories from Scotland and Ireland, I promise!