Exciting Things

I've been here a month and a half!

My most exciting news these days is that I got accepted to Eastern Washington University!!! I'm still waiting to hear if they can offer me a teaching assistantship, but I'm just so honored and thrilled to have been accepted :) The prof who emailed me to let me know had some really encouraging things to stay about my writing, and he said he was "keen" to work with me. He also said I was high on the list for assistantships, so...my fingers are crossed.

At the same time, getting such an awesome offer from EWU would complicate my hope of living in Seattle. I haven't heard back from UW yet, so I don't know for sure what my options are, but I have a feeling that I have a really hard decision ahead of me.

Had a fairly chill weekend. On Friday, I went to a market with Dow and Nos, two girls who've taken classes at Santisuk. On Saturday, Rung, Marie, Cassidy, and I went to King's Park, a big park with a couple gardens, paddle boats, tree house, paths, etc. Then we got these amazing massages (2 hours for about $7). It was everything I'd heard a Thai massage was; I was stretched in ways I didn't know I could move, was walked on, had my fingers and toes cracked.... It was great! It was wonderful to spend more time with Cassidy and Marie, too. For the first time since coming here, I'm starting to feel like there are people I can be myself around. I've been having a good time with the women in my small group, too, especially Nan. She and I have so much stuff in common. If we spoke a common language fluently, I'm sure we'd have even more to talk about.

This past Sunday we (my small group) had a pizza party at my condo. Only three of my students ended up coming, but it was still fun.

I'm working on some big curriculum revision for Santisuk's writing class. Cathy, who's been working on all the curriculum writing and publishing, asked if I could incorporate my ideas for the creative writing class with some stuff another teacher put together a few years ago (mostly I'll have to change her stuff though, because she copied almost all the lessons directly out of other books) and organize it into a book/guide that could be published and used every time someone teaches writing. It's a huge project that I don't know if I'll be able to get done, but I'm so excited about it! This definitely falls into my "skills set." It's hard to find time, though. I realized that even though I only officially work about 20 hours a week, my free time is either too short to really get into something, or I'm out most of the day with people. Sometimes I daydream about the wonderful feeling of having an entire day to myself. Selfish?

Isaac comes in 16 days!! I just realized how soon it is :)