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 =)
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?
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!!