World Cup

Wednesday Ryan and I went to the U.S.A. v Guatemala qualifying game. IT FREAKING ROCKED!

We couldn't contain the excitement and left immediately after school to the game. We tailgated with some guys we met in the parking lot before, met up with Jonny at the gate then headed in. There were actually quite a few Guatemala fans and a ton of U.S. fans (which is quite surprising since soccer isn't that big over here). The U.S. has already qualified for the next round but Guatemala had to win in order to have any chance of winning. However, we still played really hard (since they were the fourth stringers) and ended up winning 2-0. Freddy Adu (19 years old) scored his first goal for the U.S. national team.

This game has totally re-motivated me to start saving up money for World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Ryan's already committed and I already know of two places we can stay for free. So anyone else that is seriously interested should inquire :) Definitely one of the joys of being a teacher - entire summer off to travel abroad.

Shreddin'

I decided to take the snowboard up for the weekend to mix it up a little bit. Friday night, Ryan Kate and I headed up to Copper Mountain and found some cheap little hotel in Frisco to crash in for like 15 bucks a piece.

Saturday we made it to the mountain fairly early and had an awesome day. The mountain was crazy packed, verifying the name of the only run open "White Ribbon of Death." However, the snow was still awesome and made it more of a challenge for me to get better on my board.

Apres ski - We met up with Kate's friend from high school (Arthur) and headed out to explore the night life of Vail. After a very interesting night of bar hopping - getting a ride home from a police officer to avoid the cab fee (seriously, we just simply asked him for a ride home) and avoiding an altercation with a guy due to me telling his girlfriend "to get off of my chair," we headed back to his ridiculously sweet house. Seriously, he got this house from another couple's divorce settlement which cut the price of the house down to about a third of what it was listed as. It has about 5 temperopedic (sp??) beds, a hot tub, and overlooks a national refuge on the side of the mountain. The best part of it all though, is that he is completely down to Earth and will make an excellent ski buddy this season.

Sunday I had Ryan drive me to the mountain on his way back down to Denver since Kate and Arthur take about 10 times longer to get ready (well specifically Kate does). I met up with another friend from Denver who came up for the day and rode for about 3-4 hours before the other two made it to the mountain.

I think I definitely hit a breaking point for snowboarding - I can officially "ride switch" (with my opposite foot forward) and feel completely comfortable on jumps (I can almost do a grab).

Wednesday Ryan Jonny Arthur and I are going to the U.S. World Cup Qualifying match in Denver. We got freaking sweet seats (with "Sam's Army") and this will be my first time seeing a soccer match of this caliber!

Happy Endings

So I don't know what happened today, but ALL my students brought their A game.

Geometry - My students are learning proofs which has proved to be a struggle for everyone that goes through West. I think it's really difficult because of the language barrier (they all speak English as a second language) and the fact that students aren't often asked to explain "why" or what they are doing. However, today we went through flow chart proofs and everything clicked. I asked the students to walk me through it and they were remembering all their conjectures (i.e. vertical angles, triangle conjectures, AIA and even CPCTC!!) Now I know this may not mean very much too anyone reading this except Aunt Sue, but just know that this is completely different than any other math high school students are expected to do.

Algebra - Finally the students grasped how to solve linear equations. I've been working with "undoing" equations and the distributive property for 2 weeks with little to no turnover - until today! I asked EVERY SINGLE STUDENT in the class at least 2 questions about solving equations and had them walk me through it. We had about 4 or 5 different ways (each of them came up with) to solve a single equation. You can call me a huge loser, but it seriously almost brings a tear to my eye thinking about it right now. I had about 5 teachable moments today (when students ask you a question that leads to a huge discussion)!!!

On another note, the students decided to protest against the dress code at our school (which is very strict) that involves wearing West High School t-shirts/sweatshirts. Now I came into school this morning with an email warning (Students are having a dress code protest, we don't know what we're going to do about it, so stay tuned). Here's how I handled it.

"Well it looks like quite a few of you have decided to protest the dress code, so here's how its going to work: I think its great that you guys are working together to accomplish something and make a statement, but you all must realize that consequences come from protesting. So here's what's going to happen, all of you not wearing proper dress code attire, move to the right corner of the room and be prepare yourself for you pop quiz. If you would like to not take this quiz, simply put your uniform shirt on."



Not more than 10 minutes later, one of the administrators walks in my room and in a stern voice "everyone not in dress code stand up and come with me to the auditorium!" The students who just put on their uniforms look up at me, laugh and say "thanks Mr. Baalerud." hahaha

Anyway, I can't wait for this weekend. I think we have a pretty good crew going into the mountains for some heavy (hopefully) shreddin'.

SNOW STORM IN DENVER!!!

Do you know how much snow the mountains must be getting!!!?? Niether do I, I guess I'll have to go find out

A Change of Pace

Something exciting may be happening.... if you want more information, talk to my parents or Aunt Sue :)

I'm not ready to put it in my blog yet, but this is a hint...

November Powder.. what???

Sunday Kate and I actually left early enough to make it to the mountain close to opening. We decided to go to Copper Mountain since they were getting "a foot and half of snow." Of course, this turned out to really be about 1.5". What I now realize, is that everyone that lives up in the mountains and especially the employees at ski resorts are way too optimistic. None-the-less, the mountain looked fairly empty and last time we had a pretty stellar time.


Not-so-much though. The U.S. ski team was practicing (initially I thought it would be cool) which caused everyone to funnel to one side of the run hoping to evade being plowed over by an alpine boarder or one of the racers going 40+ mph down the run. It was pretty sweet watching how perfect their form was...even on the ice. After about 2 hours of bulletproof (ice) suicide skiing on the "white ribbon of death," we decided to check out Breck.


HORRIBLE!!! Breck had one run open with no vert. and a million people. We did two runs there before we decided to bounce. However, we did get to enjoy some beer and lunch on the gondola ride up.


Our next and final option was A-Basin. So we left Breck, finished up my Pig-O-Beer (it's a keg shaped like a pig), got it refilled in Frisco and headed over to the mountain. When we arrived at A-Basin it started snowing like crazy!!! Not an intense blizzard, but a huge dump of big fluffy snowflakes. Needless to say, the next hour of skiing was amazing. Nothing less than crashing through 3-4 inches of fresh powder...in November!!!

So on a funny note, while Kate and I were walking to the lift at Copper Mountain there was a lady handing out free Nature Valley Bars. Now as we were walking there was a little girl (about 5 years old) walking akwardly in her ski boots to catch up with her mom who was about 20 yards ahead of her. As we took our Nature Valley bars, the lady looked at me, hands me another one and says "here's one for your little girl."

Definitely the first time I've ever been mistaken for a dad, haha.

A Visit from Dad and opening weekend

Fall break was relaxing and all around a great time. Dad flew in on Wednesday as planned and hung out with me for the majority of the week. We spent the first day running errands (I needed to get an oil change and do some other stuff that I normally don't have time for) and relaxing which was beneficial since getting used to the altitude takes a while. Friday we went up to Loveland Basin and got some good early season skiing in. The old man did really well for his first time out in 10 years (only 1 tip-over ha ha) and I'm starting to get pretty comfortable doing 180's and riding switch.

Sunday I took him off to the airport then headed back up the mountain to A-Basin to ski with Rae Kate and some friends. It was a little frustrating since only 1 lift was open and we had to wait in line about 15 minutes on average. However, things calmed down around 2pm and the snow became quite a bit better.

School's been going about the same as usual. I decided not to let all the little things that I consider less important bother me and just focus on teaching my students math - like I'm supposed to. I did decide to rearrange my classroom again. I want to see how well the students work when they're not in groups. This will definitely make my classroom easier to manage, but more work as far as helping with homework goes.

Okay so here's the really exciting part (not to take away from Fall Break at all) - We had Monday off (yesterday) because of Veteran's day which gave me a three day weekend :) So here's how it started:

Friday we had a staff vs. staff volleyball game against one of our rival schools (unfortunately this school wins at everything), so we felt as a staff we needed to make our school feel like winners and show our students some determination by kicking some ass. As many of you know, volleyball occupies majority of my summer team sport activities and I'm extremely competitive. So the first game was crap, the scorers messed up and ultimately cost us the game. It was 23-21 us and for some reason they randomly changed it to 20-20 and we ended up losing by one point. The next loss was even more frustrating because we decided that we would just rotate all the teachers in, so the starting line up sat on the bench for the entire game while the opposing game just played their best players non-stop. So the third game we decided to do the same and rocked them. The fourth game we went back to the old method and of course lost. Oh well, either way it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed spiking the ball into the faces of the rival school ;)

Afterwards we went out to a Mexican restaurant close by for some Margarita pitchers and authentic food, then Ryan and I went over to the Park Tavern to meet up with Jonny, Lauren and Kate.

Saturday was opening weekend for Copper, Breck and Keystone so Kate and I decided we would mount our skis and just rip the man-made snow for the weekend. We went to Copper on Saturday and had an awesome day. There were only 2 runs open, but the lift went up to 12,100 ft and had a pretty decent vertical. The resort was actually pretty empty and the snow was decent (awesome by Midwest standards).

We had a little dilemma afterwards - we couldn't stay with my friend that works at Copper Mountain. Our initial plan was to just find an incredibly cheap hotel in Frisco (city close by Copper) and crash their for the night, but still would have ran us $30 a piece. However, my friend Samira (she volunteers in my math class) was staying in Breck with some friends for the night in a huge hotel room. Saved!

So Samira's friend was putting on a huge benefit concert/auction/dinner/party for the mountain rescue team at a banquet hall. It was cost $20 and included dinner, raffle, prized and most importantly beer! So we met up with them and had an awesome night of bar hopping in Breck and random Obama chants.

I LOVE BRECKENRIDGE. I want to move there. It's definitely the coolest ski town I've been to. It looks kind of like downtown Rochester except surrounded by mountains and wilderness. I'm definitely going to be inquiring on some jobs in that area.

The next morning I woke up early, worked out, then Kate and I headed over to Keystone to meet up with Rae and company. Similar to the weekend before, the lift line (notice "line" is not plural) was horrendous. I felt like I was waiting to go on the Raptor at Cedar Point for its opening weekend. However, that eventually calmed down, we ditched Rae and had about 3 twenty minute long ski runs on excellent snow.

We decided not to drop any money that night on a hotel room since it would actually be cheaper to drive to Denver, sleep in our own beds and then drive back up.

Alright, well class is about to start but I will update later on Monday (yesterday). It deserves a post for itself.