Sunday, September 07, 2008

my quinceanera

apparently, i just had my 15th birthday yesterday!

if you’ve noticed, all of my birthdays for the past 7 years have been spanish-themed.  this year was no exception, and my friends threw me a quinceanera last night!

for those of you who don’t know, a quinceanera is a latin american “debut” for a 15-year-old.  traditionally, the birthday celebrant wears a white dress, similar to a wedding, and she has an entourage too!  the quinceanera celebrant would be escorted by her ‘chambalan’.  i came dressed in a traditional white dress, and several of my friends wore similar dresses in a variety of colors.  the men got dressed up and there were a ton of sombreros all over the place.  the special guest of honor (other than the quinceanera herself, of course!) was “macho libre” as my chambalan.  and kat, susan, rita, and i did a special dance with our special guest star marlene!  we just had so much fun planning this thing all month long - the goofier, the better =) we totally hammed it up!  you can see in these pictures we took last night:

here’s me in my traditional white dress with rita

and all the ladies dressed up - thank you mom for getting our outfits!

and gavin was so cute dressed up as a mexican hombre

and all the guys got in character too!  check out everyone who came dressed up =)

my chambalan was “macho libre”!

thank you so much marlene for hosting this barbecue/quinceanera at your house!  i had so much fun! 

thank you to everyone who came too!  this was definitely a quinceanera to remember =)

Posted by kgrp on 09/07 at 09:45 AM
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Tuesday, September 02, 2008

first day of school

i got here (to school) by 6:52.  and not only did i get here 30+ minutes early, i’m so proud that i woke up at 5:52am.  and then i prayed and read the Bible, which is a habit that i haven’t done in a while.  i’m going to try to keep it up… i also showered, ate breakfast, and came prepared with a change of clothes for coaching later.

basically, i’m trying to start the year off on the right foot. 

i’m also sitting here reading harry wong’s “the first days of school” trying to get in the right mindset because “there is overwhelming evidence that the first two or three weeks of school are critical in determining how well the students will achieve for the remainder of the year”, and the tone is set during the first 2-3 days of school.

i want to have a good year and i’m doing what i can to be an effective teacher.  here comes the school year!  pray for me!

Posted by kgrp on 09/02 at 07:01 AM
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Monday, August 18, 2008

from the city to the mountains to the beach

on friday, we went to creamer’s 30th bday party in pasadena.  it was neat seeing old friends from college there!

but the real fun began after church as we drove up to big bear mountains looking for glenn and the rest of the rock climbing group.  FarmBoy drove all over the fire roads looking for the 3n07 road off the 3n16 and we spent more than an hour enjoying the scenery of the back roads.  we never did find them on the mountain, but we did get to meet up with them while they ate dinner in town.  every one of the campgrounds was full and you could see a lot of cars parked on the perimeter of the campgrounds, but instead of joining them, we ended up sleeping on the ‘bridge’ over big bear lake.  yup, that’s right, we just camped out in the bed of the truck on the bridge, surrounded by the lake on both sides!  it was almost a full moon… i thought it was so neat to see the sunrise too, but i guess i’m just a citygirl who hasn’t seen too many sunrises!  FarmBoy couldn’t believe i woke him up to watch a sunrise!

but c’mon… this sunrise was sooooo beautiful!

see the lake on the side of the truck?  there were people fishing there all night....

on sunday morning, we met up with the group again to follow them to the rock climbing site.  we had fun doing that too, but we had to cut our time short to make it to laguna beach cuz we had tickets to the pageant of the masters!  if you’ve never seen ‘living art’ then you’re missing out… it’s so neat to see them make a scene and make it look like a painting using real people!

it was a great weekend - we got to spend time with friends, with family, go to church, enjoy the outdoors, do some activity, and enjoy the arts!  i am so enjoying my time with FarmBoy =)

Posted by kgrp on 08/18 at 12:27 PM
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Friday, August 15, 2008

muchos tacos

these past few weeks have been chock full of activity - i’ve hung out with my family to watch WallE, gone to dinner with my parents, hung out with my friends, gone to a few concerts at the hollywood bowl, played tennis, ping pong, racquetball, volleyball, billiards, gone bowling, and i even went to legoland!  it’s been a whirlwind of activity for me… but the best part was that i got to do all of it with ‘Mucho Tacos’ =) starting with ziplining and skycycling and snorkeling in mexico, we’ve just been including each other in everything we do, and it’s been awesome!  i mean… i knew we were good friends and i knew that he understood me well, but i never ever thought that we’d be part of each other’s lives this way.

i think i’m just excited being able to share all sortsa activities together, and it’s awesome to feel like he’ll make the time for me no matter how busy he is.  it’s so neat to share thoughts, feelings, and activities with each other… and i’m looking forward to everything else we have planned!  i’m gonna have a ton of stuff to blog about =)

in the meantime, here’s a pic of the flowers that he gave me for our first date =) what a sweetie, huh?

Posted by kgrp on 08/15 at 02:44 PM
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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

geometry institute o' fun!

ok, so i’m currently on day 2 of the geometry conference i (voluntarily) signed up to attend during my summer (during which i don’t have to work).  yes, i know, my co-workers already let me know how crazy i am for signing up for something that is not mandatory during my time off.  and never mind the fact that i don’t actually teach geometry - my current assignment is to teach 3 classes of algebra and one double block class of algebra and algebra support.  never mind the fact that during vacation i’m waking up at 6:30am to eat breakfast and get my butt to cal state san bernardino in time to do 8 hours worth of math.

i’m SO totally enjoying it!  we just spent this morning doing perspective drawings and learning different aspects to drawing perspective correctly, followed by doing some (extremely long) proofs on properties of quadrilaterals.  yesterday we did constructions using a compass and then learning to make the same constructions using geometer’s sketchpad on a computer.  i believe by the end of this week we’ll have done all of constructions possible in euclid’s book 1, and that makes me excited.

yay!  more constructions!  all week long!

yes, i’m a nerd.  that’s probably why i enjoyed taking the pre-test yesterday as well…

but i think the reason i’m enjoying this class so much is that finally, my creative and problem-solving side is being used and i’m enjoying the artistic aspect to the math as well.  as a teacher, my job is challenging because i have to work with students and that is more of a psychology experiment, trying to get them to co-exist and learn.  but this week, i just get to look at puzzles and try to figure them out and i haven’t stretched that part of my brain in a while.

i think i’m so gonna have to sign up for my masters here at csusb to get a masters in math education.  yay!  i’ll be a student again!!

Posted by kgrp on 08/05 at 12:22 PM
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Thursday, July 31, 2008

fishing boat charter

on friday, we went on a fishing boat charter in cozumel.  our captain barak was pretty cool - was from turkey, worked for the US navy, been all over the place, and works with nuclear stuff when he’s not taking out people onto the waters…

we had a lot of fun even though we didn’t catch a lot of fish, but we caught enough for lunch and dinner that day!

kat caught the first fish, and we used that to make ceviche for lunchtime.  fresh caught ceviche was awesome!

i caught the next fish, but i didn’t do such a great job of reeling it in… i paused too long and therefore shared part of my catch with a shark!  that’s ok, we were able to eat what was left =)

marlene caught the last fish!  we brought our 1.5 fishes over to a great restaurant called kinta - the owner kris was working as a waiter and the creations he made with our fishes were spectacular!  that restaurant is now marlene’s most favorite restaurant in the entire world!

if you ever get a chance, go eat at kinta!

Posted by kgrp on 07/31 at 02:22 PM
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and a zip line into the trees

2 days after our hidden worlds adventure, we went on a jungle jeep adventure where i got to drive a jeep around mexico, zip line through the trees again, swim in another cenote, and even hold some crocodiles.  it was mucho much fun!

here’s a video of me ziplining into the tree because i couldn’t find the brake.  hahahah!  on the first half, i slammed into the guy (i’m so sorry, elmer!!) and slammed into the padded tree, but i like this video better =)

holding a crocodile (and trying to kiss it!)

my first time holding a snake

and some big iguana relative....

and sporting my brand new snake necklace

isn’t that coolio?

Posted by kgrp on 07/31 at 12:51 PM
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