Olay Olay Olay Olay

So the Varsity soccer team won it's first game yesterday 9-0!!! Granted the team we played wasn't very good, but I still thought our guys played fairly well. It definitely brought back old memories terrible referees, adrenalin rushes as you pound a shot into the back of the net, watching the opponent go flying through the air after a perfectly timed tackle and the sweet taste of victory.

Back at school, pretty much all of the teachers are extremely stressed and frustrated. Everyone for the most part feels like their voice is not being heard and not enough is being done about the overflow of students in core classes. Supposedly everything will be balanced out by September 5th. However, that will make things tricky considering the students will have already been in one class for 3 weeks and then will be expected to switch to a possibly completely different class environment and method of teaching. More to come on that..

My training has been going very well this week. I did some reading on the race for next weekend and definitely felt a little bit of the race jitters. I'm seriously pumped for this. This morning I woke up at 5 and biked to the YMCA, did 1000m swim then immediately hopped back on my bike for 12 miles to school. I felt amazing in the pool and on the bike afterwards. I think I finally got back into swim shape. I just need to keep it up for this next week.

I'm really looking forward to relaxing this long weekend. Although last year's events were definitely exciting (getting the boat stuck on the side of house, pulling out the emergency bottle of tequila to erase any feelings of guilt, watching Aunt T fall into the livewell, etc..), I really just want to focus on training, kick it with Duemling on Saturday (he's in town), bbq all day Monday, and most importantly - grade a million papers and prep for the next few weeks of school. If everything goes well this weekend, this should be exactly what I need.

GOOD NEWS!!!

Alright so I gave the random rant about why I was stressed last week. So now I'll provide you with a little more insight and then you'll understand the good news.

So last year we cut 9 teachers at West High School because Denver Public projected our school to be at less than 850 students. Now by October 1 last year, West had 1100 students. So why they projected that is beyond me. Anyway, West High School has been under the magnifying glass for the last few years because our students' CSAP (MEAP for Colorado) scores were terrible and falling and the graduation rate is extremely low. Thus DPS was inquiring to move a charter or alternative school into the building (which means everyone at West loses their jobs and all the students must go elsewhere). So our debate was that the CSAP scores stabilized and the graduation rate was increasing. Plus there is a large population of students attending.

Anyhoo, so as the first day of school (August 18) we had 650 students enrolled at West total. Now for you readers that are used to the suburbs and non-hispanic population, this isn't really that big of a deal for us. For some reason, the population out here decides to enroll their students weeks after the school year starts. I'm not really sure why, but that's just how things are done. Anway, so September 7 is the deadline as far as DPS is concerned. If we reach 850+ students, then our school gets a huge grant that will allow us to hire more teachers. MORE TEACHERS = LESS STUDENTS PER CLASS. If we have below that amount, we would have to lay off 2 more teachers. So you can all probably guess what the good news is... As of 5 minutes ago we have 848 students enrolled, hurray!!! Maybe my classes can be cut-down to below 30???

DETOX

So I had a pretty productive weekend which was nice after last week's calamity. I actually got quite a bit a accomplished.

Saturday morning I didn't end up running that 10k (which was a good thing, my legs felt terrible on Friday). However, I did manage to get a 6 mile night run in on Friday and about 70 mile bike ride on Saturday, woo hoo!

I woke up and decided to go on about a 2 hour bike ride, but after I finished a loop around the Cherry Creek reservoir (about 55 min), I thought it'd be pretty sweet to ride to Red Rocks. When I arrived I still felt pretty sweet so I biked up the foothills to Lair of the Bear (see post from June) and got to bomb down one of the mountain roads. It was awesome, it gave me that rush I get when I go skiing. The speed limit on the road is like 25-35mph for cars, which is easily surpassed on the bike. That night was pretty uneventful, just chilled and watched the men's marathon over a glass of wine (haha so sophisticated). Here's the map of my ride(sorry for the terrible quality):

Sunday I was supposed to meet up with Ashley about 3-4 miles into her run. However, I had some trouble finding our meeting point and eventually had to ask for directions. The security guard told me to go to a nearby park where "a bunch of trails meet." So I parked my car and asked a lady who was walking 5 dogs where the High Line Trails was. She said that we were on it. Now this is a little odd because it looked like a sidewalk and High Line is a large dirt trail. Whatever, I took her word for it and tried it out. Of course, it was just a little loop that went around a playground and soccer field. So I started running in the direction I thought the trail was in and ended up going through the Denver Tech Center for about 30-40 min. Finally I found a park with a map that showed where the trail was. So 50 min had gone by of my 14 mile run and I had just found the trail. So I went about 5 min down the trail (random direction) and actually ran into Ashley, SWEET! I ended up finishing the run with some pretty good splits (sub 7), took Ashley home (she had done 18 miles and if she didn't run into me would've ended up doing about 20).

After the run I turned in a decent swim at the YMCA and just ran some errands the rest of the day. I think i'm going to pick up another job at the Runner's Roost to try and fund my triathlon training. It'd be a sweet place to work (all runners with athletes as my customers) and would definitely help me network with some sweet athletes (and get better). I talked to the manager yesterday and I would only need to work weekends. I'll keep everyone updated on how that goes.

That night I went out to dinner at an authentic mexican restaurant and got my meal for $3 because it was happy hour! I was craving mexican food all week, so a pretty good end to it all.

This week may be pretty crazy. The staff has been briefed about all these different lockdowns and procedures we might have to go through if there are protests near the school. West is located about 1 mile from the capital building and DNC is here. Since that's considered a matter of national security, "we may have to go under lockdown and even evacuate the school." My guess is none of this is going to happen, but some of our administration is freaking out and telling us that we may have to "camp out at the school for multiple days incase the feds decide to quarantine the block." Maybe it's just me, but that might be a little ridiculous...but sweet at the same time if it happens ;)

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Well it's finally the end of an incredibly stressful week. Between balancing out training, practice, work and figuring out what to do with my incredibly large classes and my online gradebook not working, this week has left me very high strung. On top of that, my phone charger has not yet arrived - making it impossible for me to use my phone for more than 30 minutes a day. Usually it's nice to not have a fun and be relaxed, but I also have no internet and have no way of contacting places of importance (Colorado Department of Education, Student Loan Lenders, Banks, Credit Card Companies) as well as people that are important to me (please accept this as an apology).

So my Geometry class has 45 students in it. I have not figured out a way to fit them comfortably in my small classroom. Today I had two students sitting on top of my desk, another in the chair for my desk, and another on a stool. Apparently every Geometry section is like that right now(good thing we cut that extra math teacher we didn't need). My 3rd/4th period Algebra class has 36 students (which is way too many for a freshman class with huge learning gaps) and my final class has 22 students and are all high achieving. So needless to say, my last class is easiest to teach.

On a lighter note, I'm doing a 10k run with Ashley tomorrow and am pretty pumped for it. My triathlon training has been pretty stellar so we'll see how that converts to a straight up run. Besides that, i'm really looking forward to some R and R this weekend. I definitely need to catch up on some sleep and do some laundry like whoa!

Another sad note... It looks like none of the international employees will be returning next year to Winter Park :( That means I lose about 80% of my friends from up there and a lot of the craziness. I heard last year that there were some problems with work Visas. I guess all I can do is hope for the best.

Back to school, Back to school, prove to dad that i'm not a fool

So this last week has been extremely hectic in trying to move in to my apartment and getting prepped for school. Of course, i'm severely unprepared for school.

The apartment:

I LOVE MY NEW PLACE. With the help of craigslist and clearance sales at Target, I have managed to fully furnish my living room and should have a bed by this evening. Here are some pictures:

Obvsiously the one below is what my bedroom looks like so far....

So just finished with Day 1. I LOVE my 7th and 8th period Algebra class. I can already tell i'm gonna have a lot of fun with them. They're energetic but well behaved and very diverse. However, my 3rd and 4th period could be quite challenging. First of all I have 34 students in that class and did not have enough desks to seat all of them. Second of all, I have flirty girls who cause a world of distractions to the dudes in the class. I'm hoping that class will eventually spread out and drop down to below thirty.

On another note, I'm registered for my first triathlon September 6th in a town called Longemont. It's just north of Boulder and will be a 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run. I'm stoked.

Well it's off to soccer practice. I should have my phone charger back by tonight, so I can call all you eager family members and tell you about my life.

Summer Time and the Livin's Easy

Well it's really hard to make a quick summary of all the exciting stuff that happened this summer. So I'll try and pick out a few key moments of it so ya'll don't get too bored.

ROAD TRIP back to the Mitten

So Deener flew for those last few days I was out here and I made it a point to show her as much of my life as possible. So the first day we just kind of took it easy so she could adjust to the altitude. Friday I decided to get her little butt into shape and we went on a 3 hour hike up Red Rocks. Saturday we drove up to A-Basin to do a little shredding. Now the drive up was always quite interesting, it was mid-80's in Denver so we drove up to about 12,000 ft with no top on the jeep and took some pictures at the continental divide. We then proceeded back down to ski on the slush that was left at the resort (no complaints though since it was 65 degrees, sunny and in June)! The coolest thing was that the snow would erode and eventually turned into running water down the slopes. You could just hop onto the mini stream, hydroplane down it and hop back onto the snow. SICK!!!

The road trip back presented an interesting surprise. I accidently took the wrong freeway (76 instead of 70) and drove us into Kansas, whoops. So that added about 5 hours to our trip but did give us a chance to pick up some sweet doo-rags.



FLORIDA


The day after I got back from Michigan, Eugene talked me into flying down to Florida for a week before Summer School started. It was a lot of fun as always (Boating through thunderstorms, winning a beer pong tournament and getting the worst hangover ever).


SUMMER SCHOOL in Rochester Hills


So with a little help from Aunt Sue and my amazing resume ;) I somehow landed a job in the Rochester School District for the summer. Now this is awesome for several reasons:


1.) Gets my foot in the door of one of the best school districts in the country
2.) Builds my resume
3.) Pays ridiculously well so I can dig myself out of debt


Teaching in this district is way different than the urban setting i'm used to. Even though I was teaching a recovery course, the students are much more motivated and better behaved. I thought it was quite amusing that my supervisors and co-workers would stop periodically to "check on me" because they "didn't know if I'd be able to handle the kids." All in all it was a great learning experience and rewarding (I only had one student fail each semester as opposed to the 50% I have at DPS).



MY NEW BIKE


So I finally decided to stop worrying about the price and buy a road bike. It's F*ing awesome. I bought an entry level tri bike (Trek Equinox 5) and have been riding it like crazy since the day I brought it home. Here's a picture :) The first day I decided to book it down the Tienken hill and passed a car (probably +40 mph) and then hit a small crack in the road and blew my tire. I then proceeded to carry my bike to the nearest gas station and called my Aunt Lori to have Aunt Sue pick me up. Since then i've been much smarter about where and how I ride and have yet to experience a similar mishap.




CHERRY FESTIVAL


My old roomies Tank and Al easily convinced me to pay a visit to the Cherry Capital (Traverse City) for a weekend of old fashioned craziness. Easily the best weekend of the summer. Since this weekend is way to hard to describe in a single blog posting, here are some things that stick out: Casino, K-ho (the only lesbian bar in Northern Michigan), "summer time in Northern Michigan", waking up on a beach in the morning, and hanging out with moms at the bar.

Great Lakes Relay


Even better than last year. We had 11 people on our team as opposed to 7 last year and I ran extremely well. My last three runs of the relay were all sub 6 min pace ranging from 5:40 to 5:55. I also finished top 12 on my second leg of the race "Tommy Toyota" which dubbed the hardest leg of the 270 mile relay. Of course when I returned I was injured and took 3 weeks off from running. But I'm back at it again and slowly adjusting to the altitude.



Vacation with the Family


The following weekend (third in a row up in Northern Michigan) I went up to Gaylord to hangout with the family at a cottage on Lake Otsego. As usual it was great being able to water ski (I slalom skied well for the first time!), ride my bike out through the backcountry, and chill with the fam.


Back to Colorado


So I left last Friday to head back to Denver (the Sunshine State) and return to the real world. The drive back was quite pleasant since Samantha decided to keep me company on the 18 hour drive. It took a little longer to get out here since we decided to go to a wedding on Friday and spent about 1.5 hours going to motels with No Vacancy in West Illinois.



We rolled into Colorado around midnight then spent most of Saturday hiking through Red Rocks and doing a 1.5 hour run for 3 hours (probably not the best run to start out with when jumping a mile in altitude).


Road trip hilights: No Vacancy, "that girl is so dangerous", trying to camp at Red Rocks summit, Rave Run and the beautiful city of Proctor Colorado.



RANDOMS



Fourth of July in Ann Arbor, new high scores in frolf, Drunk History, Off Roading, Eugene playing volleyball with one leg, Roxanne and Ball Room Blitz, using a crane to lift Cullen out of the jeep, "i'm gonna do a shot with every single person that walks in the door," Texas Road House, Wednesday Dinners and of course, Eugene's V-knee.

(This picture is from the gay bar on July 4th in Ann Arbor, notice the cosmos- haha)

THANKS TO ALL THE AMAZING PEOPLE BACK HOME FOR GIVING ME AN EPIC SUMMER.

BLOG IS BACK

just not right now....I will have an update on my summer craziness and my glorious return to the rockies soon!