Palm Springs at Dawn

This week had the most beautiful sunrises. John and I were like little kids at Christmas gawking and taking pictures from our back balcony. So, I thought people from home might enjoy this shot. This week at school was great! Monday and Tuesday all of my students were asking where "mom" was and seemed very concerned about her travel home and when she was going to come back and visit. I thought that was pretty funny!

Also, we received the results from the first benchmark test that our 8th grade students took. Our district person in charge of science gave us the district's results in comparison to our school and the results were amazing! Our students did better on the test than any other school in the district. He picked one question in particular to show us the results and 78% of students at my school got the question correct, while the district only had a percentage of 26% correct on it! So, I now feel a little bit better about my students and can tell that there is some learning going on eventhough I sometimes feel like I am teaching science to brick walls!

Visit with Mom

My mom was here last week for her very first visit to California! She arrived on Wednesday night and stayed until Monday morning. This time allowed for us to see many things that Palm Springs has to offer. Mom got to journey to school with me on Thursday and experience the students at Nellie Coffman...I think this was an eye opening experience for her! It was great to have an extra hand in the classroom that day because we did a lab experiement on Acids and Bases. She also was able to help with the pre sales of our yearbook during the 3 lunches. I must say that her help was much appreciated! Later on that day we headed downtown Palm Springs to go to the Thursday night street fair. There were many vendors, produce, and music, but our favorite was the old antique jewelery booth where we each found something to suit our taste!

Friday we went to the Living Desert which is sort of a zoo, but they have only desert wildlife there. It is actually a pretty cool place and I even picked up a few christmas gifts there as well! On our way back from the Living Desert I took mom around to search for a few celebrity homes and up 74 which is the highway that goes up into the Santa Ana Mountains towards Idlywild. Below is a picture of the view of the Cochella Valley near sunset.

Saturday was a jam packed day of traveling to the Ariel Tram which is a rotating car that goes up to the top of Mt. San Jacinto. We went in the morning to avoid lines and such and we were both not expecting the drastic temperature change. It was about 40 degrees cooler! Mom had to buy a sweatshirt it was so cold. We hiked around up on the top of the mountain for a few hours. We also ran into Mary Wilson who is the woman I stayed with when I first visited Palm Springs back in June! Below is one picture we took from the top San Jacinto.

After the tram we went to the Indian Canyons and did some hiking back there for a while. I was amazed at how beautiful it was back there! There was an oasis with tons of palm trees and canyons. We were tired after this but managed to go home and get pretty for El Paseo...AKA the Rodeo Drive of the Desert! After this, we went for sushi and then to a party for some friends of mine. We finished up the weekend by taking it easy on Sunday. Mom of course cooked for me! Mmmm...potato soup and fruit pizza, and cleaned my apartment while I did some school work.

All in all it was a great weekend and I look forward to doing more exciting things the next time she comes out for a visit!

I know, I know...

I think it has been almost a month since my last blog...I know that is bad. I promise I'll be better about it from here on out! This will have to be a quick update as it is almost my bedtime. San Diego was a good time. I got to see LaJolla, the beach, Miramar (where Top Gun was filmed), and the Blue Angels. I'll try to attach a few pics.

My school participated in Red Ribbon Week and we had a series of spririt days throughout the week. You will find some pictures I took for yearbook of some of my favorite students!! Yearbook is going well thus far, it is a lot of work, but fun. I also recently chaperoned the Halloween dance...WOW was that a great time. So many students dressed up and we set up a back drop for students to take buddy pictures for a yearbook fundraiser. Colleen (the other teacher who helps with yearbook) and I had a blast doing this!


I'll try to attach some other pictures of my friends and I from the last few weekends. We have been having a great time on Friday nights, but then the rest of my weekend is usually consumed with school work. I'm looking very forward to this week because I only have 3.5 days of school and mom flies out on Wednesday night!!