Sushi

I’ve got sushi on my mind. Last Saturday night, Eric and I went to this really nice restaurant right off the lake with Steve and his wife Kay. Anyway, at this restaurant, I got to experience the wonderfully delicious and exotic taste of sushi for the very first time. It was so good. We tried so many different kinds of sushi that it was impossible for me to have just one favorite. I loved the eel and the tuna and the salmon, and I loved the Philadelphia roll. Oh, and the mitzo soup was delicious too. The only thing that could have made the experience better would have been more sleep. I was still tired from working all week and not getting enough sleep on Friday night (yet again). Thankfully, I was able to sleep in a little bit on Sunday, so at this moment in time, I’m not that tired. Now I can go back to that experience on Saturday night and relive the taste of sushi. Did I mention that I loved sushi?

Who do you want to be?

"Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
Yesterday is a promise that you've broken
Don't close your eyes, don't close your eyes,
This is your life
And today is all you've got now
And today is all you've ever had
Don't close your eyes
This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything that you dreamed
that it would be when the world was younger,
and you had everything to lose?
Yesterday is a kid in the corner
Yesterday is dead and over
This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, are you who you want to be?"

Newspring band sang this song today in church, and it made me think about how I'm living my life. Am I living my life the way God wants? Am I the woman God's called me to be? I want to be the kind of person who people meet and say "Now there's someone who loves Christ." I want to be someone who is a blessing to others. I want to make a difference.
This is your life, are you who you want to be?

My Official First Post

There are so many things I could write about right now. So much has happened over the past week that I don’t really know where to start or what exactly I could write. I’m in the process of switching over to blogspot instead of livejournal and will be keeping my journal entries posted here instead of there because I feel like a change. My good friend Marie uses blogspot, and she’s the one who gave me the idea of switching. I won’t update every day, but I’ll try to post something at least once a week. It’s kind of neat looking back on journal entries that I’ve written over a year ago and seeing how life has changed since then, and I’d like to keep something like that going, especially during my senior year of college. Life is going to be so different after I finally graduate. College has definitely been the best part of my life, and I know that things are going to get even better. My relationship with Christ has grown so much over the years, and I’m so excited about the plans he has for me that I can’t help but feel happy all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I do feel sad sometimes but it’s not the same. It’s like, even though sad things happen, I’m still okay because I know that God has a purpose for my life, and I don’t have to worry because I know that He’s in control.

I’m in the third week of my student teaching experience at Crescent High, and so far it’s going really well. Every morning I teach Algebra II Honors, and throughout the day, I take attendance, go over homework, grade papers, take up assignments, tutor individual students, develop lesson plans, unit plans, long range plans, Smartboard presentations, meet with parents, work with the Freshman Academy, and do anything and everything that my cooperating teacher asks of me. Over the next two weeks, I’ll pick up the rest of Mrs. Lewis’ classes until I’ll be teaching full-time. It’s going to be so much work, but I’m excited. I love teaching; it’s just the other things about teaching – all the administrative tasks that I don’t like. I’m thankful that I won’t have to teach for a profession. I submitted all of my scholarship applications to USC’s School of Library Science last weekend, and I’m praying that I’ll qualify for as many scholarships as possible. I’ll be a full-time grad student in the fall, just bought a house, and I could definitely use the scholarship money.

Even though I’m really busy with student teaching, being an RA, working at, ok, I’m going to stop now, I don’t feel like listing everything I do because it will make me look like an overachiever, the point is this: Even though I’m busy, I love life, and I love my friends. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how I managed to find such great people in my life. So to all my friends who put up with my craziness… thanks. Thanks for always being there even when I don’t have time to spend with you every day or talk for hours on the phone. When this past summer happened, I realized how many friends God has put in my life, and it makes me cry to think about how many people actually care about what happens to me.

I know this post is getting long, yet I still have an urge to write something, even if I really don’t have anything specific to say. Wait. There’s something that just came to my mind, and I’m smiling right now because it’s something nice to think about. I went to Frankie’s Fun Park last Friday night with my Newspring homegroup, and I got to spend time getting to know someone that I met last December. He goes to Clemson, is working on a mechanical engineering degree, and is part of another homegroup at Newspring. We had so much fun on Friday night (I didn’t get back to my room until after 3!), and I don’t really know why, but I can’t stop smiling. We’re going to do something again this Friday night with a couple of other friends. Actually, I’m setting up a blind date for two friends at Newspring, and we’re going to go along to make it more of a “group of friends” type setting.
I think I’m a diabetic. That was random, but I really think I am. Example: Last Friday, I almost passed out in class. I was sitting down behind the teacher’s desk, and things started to get “spotty.” I stared at the wall and all I could see were black spots everywhere, and I felt really weak. Then I felt like I was going to die, right there in the teacher’s chair. Mrs. Lewis had a student take me to the nurse. She thought my blood sugar was low so she gave me a candy bar. That only made things worse. After I ate the candy bar, I felt horrible, like I had eaten too much candy on Halloween. So… I went home early on Friday and stayed in bed all afternoon. I decided not to eat any sugar foods all weekend, and I felt a lot better. THEN today, at school, four days after my visit to the nurse, I ate a piece of cake, and now I feel sick. Hmmm. Is there a connection? Sigh. I might just have to give up sugar all together. It’s going to be so terrible. Life without chocolate, what am I going to do? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Without all those extra calories from sugar, maybe I’ll lose weight. :-)

I think my urge to write has finally subsided. My students are taking a test tomorrow, so I don’t have a lesson to prepare. It feels good having a night to myself. I think I’m going to go work out at the YMCA and read a book while I’m working on those elliptical machines. Working out on machines is funny when you think about it. Imagine what people from other countries must think of us Americans, driving someplace just so we can walk in one place.