Good morning, Baltimore!

B-more was hot as Hades this week! But despite the heat it was fun to still get out and see different parts of the city.

On Tuesday I met up with my favorite Sunnilicious to watch an Orioles/Red Sox game.

The next day I met up with a friend and headed over to the Avenue for dinner. We ended up at Holy Frijoles for $1 tacos! I know, that's an amazing deal.

Look at these incredible decorations in the restaurant! My little ponies! I felt right at home.

$1 Tacos definitely need to be a weekly event

We went and took a picture outside of Cafe Hon, which apparently is pretty famous. Here's what I found out about it, I think I need to go back and go in.

If you are looking for the heart of Baltimore in a restaurant then Cafe Hon is the place to go. Think the movies Hairspray and the play. Outside the cafe are brightly colored chair and table sets of lime green, yellow and orange. When you walk in you are transported to 50's Baltimore, life size Elvis figurine at the door, servers have big hair and brightly colored outfits.

 

Top Dollar News

For all you needing to know this vital information about my life on Coppin State campus, I won a cereal eating contest against Joe this morning. You may be laughing your head off and rolling on the floor laughing at this tremendous news, but news like this is exciting at the dorms. Here's basically what it looked like...

Technical difficulties...I just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a funny youtube video about a cereal eating contest but they were all too boring. But, the good news is, I've already set up tomorrow's challenge. We'll be powerwalking from the dorm, getting our cereal and chowing it down. I've pretty much convinced Brooke that she needs to video record it for us. If that goes down as planned I'll be posting it soon.

Until then, "you'rrre great!" "silly rabbit, Trix are for kids," "we eat what we like,' "gotta have my Pops," "I'm coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs,"always after me Lucky Charms, they're Magically Delicious..."

~Miss Woolley

p.s. I love this picture and I love these ladies (just needed to throw a picture in here!!!)

Girlz

Tonight we decorated cupcakes and ate cheesecake and had the most outrageously funny girl talk. It warmed my soul.

McKell, Caitlin, Lyndsay and Becky decorating cupcakes

Me and my cupcakes

My glorious creations! :)

The whole lot. They were so delicious!

From Dance Parties to Drum Circles to Deathly Hallows and more

June 29th was my last day of a 3-year run at the FBA. They threw me a pizza party to bid me farewell. I'll definitely miss my co-workers and all of the good times we had together.

Right before Sunni's birthday the Dream Team had a little birthday dinner celebration.

I love these ladies. Oh, we're so cute. And the craziest thing of all, three of us had Subarus.

A few days later we threw an epic birthday dance party for the lovely Ms. Mumford, or Sunnilicious as I like to call her. Here are some highlights from the night. 

Sunni's a Belieber. Me doing my signature air guitar move. Sunni & Caitlin breaking it down.

So I put my hands up, they're playin my song! Party in the USA!

This picture represents our school activity yesterday, the Drum Circle. All the kids in our program got to participate and pound their hearts and hands out for this lively event. I was especially happy that I was able to participate as well; it was a blast!

And this very night, we finished the epic tale of Harry Potter's life. I loved this last movie!

Alex and Jesse as stoic as Snape.

Neville Longbottom, what a man!

Alex's doppelganger

And lastly, I saw this sign on the way to the movie theater. The past couple of weeks have definitely brought me JOY!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

            Last night our group went to an Orioles game.  Here are some of the people from my cohort.

Me with Brooke and Adam

Emmanuel, Chris, Katie and Miguel

Adam, Kaitlyn, and Jermaine

Camden Yards

Things that made me laugh today

This summer I'm working with the Bell program. Let's just say that going to the school on Monday left me in a somewhat shocked state. I didn't quite know how to react to the teacher's classroom management and discipline style. I didn't know how to interact with the kids either. I just felt paralyzed for some reason (which is not like me at all!). Luckily we were given an assignment to go and listen in on what the kids talk about when they are out of the classroom.

The result: kids are just kids. They talked about Halo Reach, Japanese comic books, superheroes, wanting to be taller, going to the pool....

But by far the best line I heard today was one boy telling another, "Yo, I seen the weather channel, we gonna die in 2012.” Oh really? I thought. Somehow I don't quite understand how the weather channel would have such prophetic information and unfortunately he didn't elaborate on it. I guess I'll have to investigate on my own. Let me know if you have the answer. Haha.

I need to make a correction to the previous post. The head teacher is Mr. Barnes and the TA is Ms. Barker. And I am Miss Woolrey. Some people can't pronounce my name (i.e. Mr. B).

He had some great jabs at the students today that made me burst out in laughter inside. I'm really learning out to control my outrageously loud laughter (how professional of me).

So here were the other 2 gems of the day from Mr. Barnes:

1. One student had her arms in her shirt because she was cold. He asked her why she was doing so and then said, "it's 400 degrees outside, how could you be cold?!" Then everyone laughed. You're not laughing? Guess you had to be there. :)

2. Ironically the second comment was to the same student. She was messing with her hair and he said, "your hair looks lovely, I promise, leave it alone." He had to say this about 3 times.

Other quick items of note today: They had homemade Mac-n-Cheese for dinner in the cafeteria. I ate 2 helpings worth...and had ice cream. My suite mates and I decided that we've already reached the stage of eating when we're stressed. Luckily I've been playing frisbee the last few nights to work off some of that cafeteria food. Which reminds me, another night of falling while trying to get the frisbee, which lead to re-injury of my bruised leg from last night. But I'm loving every minute of it. It feels great to get out there and sweat so much that you feel like you just took a shower in your clothes.

Another late night of reading and writing, but I've got Keith Urban to keep me company so it's fantastic!

15 days, or is it 14?

Remember when..

..I turned 30, went to Hawaii, quit my job, helped to set a Guinness World Record and started school again?! I didn't think so (I barely remember it myself).

I'm currently sitting in my dorm room at Coppin State University. Here's a picture of the outside.

Don't let it fool you, it may look new on the outside but it's stuck in the 70's on the inside. And you know what...I'm loving every minute of it. (More pictures to come of the interior).

What am I, a little white girl, doing on THIS campus on THIS side of Baltimore? Only the best thing I've ever done in my life! I can't even begin to describe how guided I've felt and been throughout this whole process. To "randomly" decide to join a listserve of Young Education Professionals when I wasn't even in the education field (where I subsequently found out about UTC). To not get accepted to a summer of awesomeness in France working at an English language camp. The timing of everything was so perfect and so directed. I know God's hand was in it and I'm extremely grateful for His watchful and diligent care over me and over all of His children.

I've been in the program for a week now and it's a little crazy being back in school again. But I feel very blessed to have this opportunity to learn something new and exciting and I intend to be one grand student by fully engaging myself in the work, asking as many questions as I can and practice my little biscuits off!

I'm in a cohort program called the Urban Teacher Center which is parterned with Lesley University to provide us with a Dual Masters Degree in Education and Special Education. I couldn't have found a better program anywhere else.

We're working in summer programs in Baltimore until mid-August and guess who got placed with the 7th graders? Um, me. Yes a bit scary. I definitely panicked a little when I walked in the room to meet the class, but my excitement is building to have the opportunity to work with my 7th graders.

The head teacher, Mr. Barner is from Jamaica. Just thinking of him makes me smile/laugh. I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to share about him. He is like a roasted marshmallow, hard and crusty on the outside but warm and gooey on the inside. Well, he's not warm/friendly with the kids much, he is a discipliner, but when he talks to me or the TA he turns into his chill Jamaican self. I'm gonna love it.

And just in case, I've decided to teach myself some Jamaican phrases that I can use to build a good working relationship with him. Here's what I have so far.

"Ello, mi can help yuh wid someting?"

Translation: "Hello, can I help you with something?"

"Mi love chaklit cake with nuff icenin."

Translation: "I love chocolate cake with plenty of icing."

"Yu can cyarri dis cow pan yuh chuck?"

Translation: "Can you carry this cow on your truck?"

And finally, this one will probably get me the most use with those 7th graders:

"Im jook mi inna mi yeye."

Translation: "He poked me in the eye."

The people in my cohort are pretty fantastic! They are people that are passionate about this work and you can tell. We enjoy spending time together on site at our schools, during mealtimes, during class and most especially during the nightly frisbee game. No one will ever understand how much I love to play frisbee. I haven't played it for so long and the last few nights playing with my UTC friends has brought me tremendous joy. And thankfully we'll all be doing one of my other favorite things, going to a baseball game.

Well I hope to be blogging more frequently in the future, you can thank me later.

~Miss Woolley