Current Gas Price: $3.37
Total cockroaches seen: 3 (YUCK!!)
Hello Family! How is everyone? Or should I say, "HOW YOU?" or "HOW DOIN?" Haha, these are some fun and interesting phrases I've learned while here. Wes and I have not adopted them into our vocabulary and feel free to slap me if you hear me say it :) Basically, the month of August has been categorized as "WORK." Wes is currently in his 6th week of his 8-week medicine stretch! It has been an exhausting journey for both of us but we're so excited to have two out of the way soon (he has to complete 5.5 months of medicine this year)! Wes will begin Block 4 (already?) in two weeks and we're looking forward to that. This is his schedule until the new year: Block 4 - PEDS (Sept. 22-Oct. 19), Block 5 - MEDICINE (Oct. 20-Nov. 16), Block 6 - COMMUNITY MEDICINE (Nov. 17-Dec. 14), Block 7 - MEDICINE (Dec. 15-Jan. 11). So by the time Block 8 (out of 13) begins...Wes will have completed 4 out of his 5.5 months of medicine! YES!! I started working on the 10th and will be in my fourth week of school next week!
*We had some more visitors this month, which was so wonderful! Libby came to visit us, which was so much fun and I just had the best time hanging out with her! I definitely miss her! She was unfortunately here when the most recent cockroach sighting appeared AND there was a giant cricket in her shower as well. Haha, it had rained for several days in a row before she got here (which is unusual) and it must have brought all the bugs inside because we had not seen any for some time before that. Then Dan and Dixie came to visit us and it was so nice to see them! They bought us some rocking chairs for our porch and they look so cute on our little porch! We've been sitting on them in the evenings when the weather is a bit cooler! Last night we saw several hummingbirds so I am thinking that I'll need to get a hummingbird feeder in addition to my bird feeder if I really want to be Mary Poppins :)
* Wes had this past weekend off so we took a day and went hiking in the "Upcountry" which is the northwest corner of South Carolina. We hiked to see Raven Falls and were disappointed to find out that the trail we took went only to the "Raven Falls Overlook" and that we'd have to hike several more miles to actually get to the falls (which we didn't have time to do). But, it was so wonderful for us to be together and in God's beautiful creation! It was very refreshing and just what we needed after a long week of working!
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| Here we are at an overlook of the valley. Table Rock Cliff is the background there somewhere...that is a pretty popular hike in this area! Wes has been able to go hiking with some the other residents/spouses once before as well! |
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| We both kept laughing at how easy the hike was for us after going to Jan's spinning classes at the gym. Jan is the assistant manager of our gym and she has huge muscles and is a just a really nice (and somewhat eccentric) lady. But she's also really tough...but she has put our legs in shape! |
*After hiking, we headed over to the Ringenberg's (couple from Indiana) for a birthday party! Carly, Clory, and I threw the party for our husbands (who all have birthdays in September) but then it ended up that all of the men that showed up at the party had a birthday in September so the party was kind of for all of them! So when we sang "Happy Birthday" to them it was really just all their wives singing to them :)
From left, Matt Haldeman, Joseph Hall, Wesley, Jacob Ringenberg, Josh Wicker, and Payton Foust
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| Wesley will be 28 years old on September 12th. Haha, I was laughing at how I always start to think of myself as one year older once Wes' birthday comes around, so I keep thinking I'm 27, but I still have two more months of being 26! |
* I have finally settled down into my daily therapy schedule. During the second week of school I found out that I was also going to have to see kids at Northside Middle School as well as Woodfields Elementary and Brewer Middle School. So, I was kinda of panicking but it turns out that I just LOVE my kids at Northside. I have several kids in the TMD (Trainable Mentally Disabled) class and several in the PMD (Profoundly Mentally Disabled) class. These terms (TMD/PMD) are apparently archaic and completely NOT politically correct but everyone here still uses them anyway. That is something I've definitely noticed about the south...people don't change very quickly and they are not open to a lot of new ideas. I've learned to keep my yankee mouth shut and not to suggest changes (such as having one form for something as opposed to 15 forms) because I can literally see the panic in their eyes from even the thought of doing something differently. Haha, of course this doesn't speak for everyone but the older generation especially seems to have difficulty with change!
Here is a tour of my classroom:
* We had a PTO meeting this week and I was apparently supposed to decorate the hallway outside of my room with samples of my students work (of which I have no tangible evidence at this point) so instead I got creative with a spare raccoon poster I found :) Hope you like it!
* I have started attending the PEAK, which is the weekly youth group at our church. I will be leading a small group of high school girls starting in September so I'll keep you posted on how that goes!
*Our garden is officially done for after the invasion of the giant green caterpillars! They devoured an entire tomato plant in like two days and then moved on the next one. Luckily, we had had lots of produce from them and they were starting to die so we just let the caterpillars eat them...haha, we have enjoyed watching them :)
* Wes and I celebrated our TWO year anniversary on August 29th and it was a great way to end the month! I can't believe that it has been two years already! Well...on one hand it seems like two years is such a short amount of time and on the other hand I can't really remember life before we were married. Residency has been tough on our marriage and has stretched it in many ways but we are so grateful for all the lessons we're learning about God's faithfulness through it! Here's to another wonderful year together!
*We miss you all and we're excited to see you all over the Holidays! LOVE YOU!
