i like to take photos.

heres a little snap shot of what my life is like as it appears a tad bit interesting.

6:30 wake up. oh how i miss my summer of dreams.

7:15ish leave apartment and cross the street to get to the crystal city metro stop. this is easily my favorite part of the day. i surprisingly really like getting up early and making my way to the metro dressed professional and rubbing shoulders with others in the working force. im legit. blue line to metro center, switch to red line to tenleytown.

8:05 arrive at wilson high. walk through the metal detectors. ya thats right, i have to walk through metal detectors at school. and yes i ALWAYS beep whilst going through, seriously. without fail everyday. which then leads me to having to spread 'um and have the security guard use the hand held metal detector across my body. (fortunately today they told us as teachers we dont have to go through them. SAHWEEET!!)

8:45-3:15 school. involving US History class, World History class and then AP US History. Lunch is at 11 (i finally understand laura now for always getting hungry early during the day! i never thought i would start getting hungry at freaking 11 in the morning) i eat lunch with Jamie and Jessica either in my classroom or the teachers lounge. interesting to go in there and receive weird looks from other teachers as they are probably thinking that students have infiltrated their precious lounge.

monday i gave my first two lessons, it went ok but definitely could have been better but i guess thats why im out here so i can learn and grow in my teaching style. i had to teach my first 90 minute class. never taught that long before ever.

4:30 arrive back at home and from there on it the day flies by! i swear by the time we travel home the day is already so over. unfortunately we havent been doing that much stuff after school, which we should since none of us have stuff to do for lesson planning but its kinda hard since the smithsonians close at like 5.

last week we did go to the mall straight from school to look at the war memorials. we walked around the WWII, Vietnam and Korean memorials. i love these memorials and i love talking photos at these places!

our new home!!

Korean War Memorial. pretty amazing.

on sunday we went to a farmers market type festival called the adams morgan festival. it was super cool to be there but SUCKED cause it was sunday and there was so many good places to grab food. unfortunately we werent able to be there for very long cause we had to get back for the new member dinner--didnt want to pass up on free food! the coolest part of going to the festival was meeting Mayor Fenty--the mayor of DC! Before this i didnt know who he was but i still thought it was cool.

melanie, me, the mayor, naomi, jamie and chanel

photo was taken right as he was saying...."what your teachers at wilson!? i thought you were in college!" well mayor, we kinda are, but hey, thats better then him thinking we are in high school at wilson which is what i get on a daily, if not hourly basis.

video video

As most of you know President Obama held a nation wide speech directed to all students across the entire country today. As I am now an emerging part of the american school system I watched this broadcast during lunch. I thought the speech was very interesting and powerful, but that is not the subject of this post. The point is that while watching, a television news crew came to Wilson High to video tape the students watching the video and their reaction. I was able to find this video online and posted it below (Another cool thing is that he delivered his speech from Arlington! The school that he was about is just a little west of us. It was so crazy to watch it and realize that I LIVE in Arlington!). This is a really cool video, not because of the focus on Obama, but that it shows you what Wilson High School looks like!! I was so excited to share it so you can see where I am spending my days. I think my favorite part of the school is the amzing hallways with the arches. And even more exciting is that they filmed this in the classroom that I will eventually start teaching in, so you really get to see where I am spending my time while I am at school everyday. I hope dad notices an interesting flag that is hung in my classroom once the other teacher that shares our room discovered I am a BYU student.

watch the video: http://www.globalnational.com/story.html?id=1973469

and tell me if you notice anything else interesting in it....

well that was a success.

Monday was actually a success. we got out early (considerably early by our standards) and had a great day. we actually had a formative plan and somewhat of a map to guide us through the city. success! our maps consist of these mini guides that Chanel has. she brought these cards that are called "50 walking tours of DC" so each card has a suggested walk on it with a map. now these are our maps that we use. problem is that its not a full map so it still proves a little difficult but we are managing. in order to figure out the city i put each card together to create one big map. it was like a puzzle and it was fun.

i have now been given title of navigator. Our first stop was the Holocaust Museum. at first i didnt think i had ever been but once inside i remembered going with mom and dad. but thats ok, its not like i really remembered reading all of that stuff before. so it was like the first time all over again. we first went to a section on Nazi propaganda which was super interesting. Chanel and i are really excited to go to this sorts of things as they will prove helpful for our teaching and classes. after our tour of that we headed up to the main museum. amazing. and close to tears through most of it. some of my favorite/most interesting parts were:

-the idea of how the propaganda influenced the Germans. the patriotism that swelled within that country. they had no idea that Hitler was leading them so astray.

-the hundreds of pairs of shoes on display that are the last remnants of those that died in the gas chambers

-photos of the allies coming in and liberating those at the concentration camps. those soldiers had looks of complete shock while the prisoners were filled with joy.

before we knew it we had been in there for almost four hours. very physically and emotionally draining. we almost wished we had broken the trip up into two days so we could have focused a little bit more on it. there is so much to see and do in there. we were starving so we found this place called potbellys that we had heard lots about. amazing sandwiches! ill have to take you guys when you come. (sorry dad!) then using our handy maps we found our way to the Jefferson Memorial. Loved it. It is an amazingly designed building that is right off the water. My favorite thing about being there was sitting on the steps with Chanel and talking about the amazing formation of our country. it has seriously been amazing to read my George Washington book while being here in DC. Each day I learn new things about this city and how the country was formed. I loved being able to share that with Chanel and talk about how great these men were that designed our country. Unfortunately we have had the worst luck finding people to take our photos of us! I dont know why so many people are incompetent in taking pictures. seriously. FHE was good. Definitely lacked in the cute boy department but i liked it.
i love my roommates! we hit it off great and our constantly laughing the entire time together. we all agreed that we are living together and arent with the other girls. not that they arent great, but we wouldnt get along with them as well. Yesterday we met with our director for our schools. shes alright. super annoying that she hasnt told us what schools we are going to be at. That was what we did today, which i will get to later. we also went to costco today. super hilarious. with the trip ending like this:

how are we in a super legit apartment rolling our costco cart across the lobby. really classy.

Later last night we walked to the Pentagon and went to the Memorial that is placed there from the September 11 attacks. We have all mentioned numerous times how crazy it would have been to live here during the time, especially since we have a clear view of the Pentagon from our apartment. How crazy would it be to sit at our balcony and witness that tragic event. The memorial there is phenomenal. Google it. At first I was kinda bummed that we were going at night (thought it would be hard to see) but it was so beautiful being all lit up. Very peaceful. There are over 100 benches symbolizing each person that died at that site. If the bench is facing the Pentagon that means that person was in the plane, and if its facing out, that person was in the Pentagon. It was a very calming and peaceful place, especially at night since we were like the only people there. Me, Chanel and Jessica sat on a bench together and talked about what we remembered about the attacks. Where we were, stories we remember and feelings that we had. I cried. It was pretty amazing. A three year old was on that flight. I cant even imagine that.

now today we went on the tour of the two schools we are being assigned to. Upon arrival we found out our assignments. I will be a teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. Home of the Tigers. Im really excited about this school. The doors were first opened in 1935 so it is a really interesting and beautiful campus. All of the teachers and students seemed very nice. But im a little nervous about my placement. The teacher im suppose to work with teaches AP Government, Asian Studies and 9th grade World History. Asian Studies? Im sorry, thats my least favorite subject. AP Govt? What? Im pretty sure my government class in high school was a joke. And no U.S. History? Did i not become a teacher so i could share with the world how amazing the Revolution is!? Hopefully it will still be good, and im sure i will be learning LOTS this year.

Just a quick review of the past few days. I continue to love DC and still cant get over that I will be here until December. I feel like I have already known my roommates for a very long time. I think teaching will be challenging. Im not gonna lie, Im nervous. But Im sure it will all be ok in the end.

the white house

today we ventured out to the white house after church. it kinda took us awhile to get out of the apartment which kinda drove me crazy. i can definitely see dad's influence on me since i have been here. i just want to go go go and see everything and READ everything! i saw a monument today and i just wanted to run over there and see what it was. total dad moment. we really enjoyed seeing the white house. even though ive seen it before it definitely is a must see.

we came back to our apartment and made blueberry pancakes which turned out to be quite the adventure since we literally still do not have anything in our apartment! no measuring cups, which means we had to guess. no mixing bowls which means making it in a cereal bowl. no whisks which means using a spoon. luckily we got a spatula. but it was pretty funny. luckily we had cups since chanel did not approve of me drinking out of my milk carton. the pancakes were very good as our first meal as roommates in our new apartment.

days 1 and 2

i have officially been in DC now for two days. and i LOVE it!! it has been so fun. it is just so crazy to me that i am living out here now. i seriously say to the other girls like all day "i cant believe we are living here" it is a pretty great feeling. here is a little recap of what i have been doing the past two days.

Yesterday. I went out with one of the other girls Naomi to begin looking around at our new home. first destination the mall. we got on the metro and immediately got lost. which is ridiculous because we were looking for the Washington Monument. how can you not find that thing? luckily we found it. after some brief rain (just wait five minutes and the weather changes) we headed in the direction of the Capitol. The girls that are here have never been to DC before so i have been able to tell them about different things that we are seeing. we wandered over to the supreme court and the library of congress. then we went off to Georgetown. loved it! it was the first time that i ever cursed myself for going to BYU. that place was amazing!! the city is really really cool and looks very colonial. i was hoping general Washington was going to ride around the corner on his horse any second. we walked around the university and they had such amazing enthusiasm for the school and for the new students moving in. they were dancing everywhere and so of course Chanel and i couldn't resist to start dancing too. which then led us to scream things such as "yay Georgetown! cant wait for freshman year to start!" so that we could blend in. we walked around entirely too much yesterday and ended the day by sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and just chatted for a bit. very cool.

Today. Started the day off by majorly sleeping in. its the whole time difference thing. then i went off with my new roommate Jamie to find a grocery store (hopefully this makes Laura and mom super happy as their only advice to me for the past two days was that i needed to find a grocery store. thanks guys.) its not too far of a walk and we got to pass nordstrom on the way! the grocery store is LEGIT. it totally showed me that we are living in a really nice area. it is just way nice and they have all these free samples of like cut up apples and bread and cheese spread. i love that place. after hanging out at the apartment for a bit too long we took off to Arlington National Cemetery to catch a glimpse of Ted Kennedy's funeral. this took entirely too long as we thought the procession was going to be quicker but since we were there we didn't want to leave. then we invested so much time into being there we figured we had to stick around to see it. we decided to ditch Arlington and walk across the Potomac so that we would get to the procession faster. it was a bit of a disappointment (sorry ted) but definitely a cool thing to be able to see on a first hand basis. then off to the Lincoln Memorial. I'm super excited being at these places and taking my own photos to use them as resources in my classroom. i cant wait to show my students all of my very own photos of these places. our next stop was to get some food. we have a growing problem of not taking a map with us. so needless to say we get lost a lot. and that definitely happened today. we walked around so much trying to find places to eat and found nada. but it was still nice walking and seeing everything. we stumbled upon The George Washington University which also looked amazing. its so cool that it is just right in the heart of the district. we haven't been the most on top of things to seeing everything but we definitely have time to in the next few months. so far i love being here and the girls in my apartment are great too.

next on the agenda is church tomorrow. its at 9. boo. my days of sleeping in are pretty much over. oh and our church building apparently looks over Mount Vernon. OMG. no big deal.

the DC life.

thats right. living the life has changed again. last night i arrived in my new apartment in arlington, virginia. my flight went great and when we were about to land we flew over the washington monument, memorial and the capitol building. i couldnt stop smiling. my apartment is awesome and i can even see the lincoln memorial building in the distance.

i can not wait to start living the DC life.

the bucket list.

if you know me at all the first thing you should know is that im fanatical about the dodgers. i dont know why, i cant explain it. ive sometimes wonder why i care so much. how would life be like if i didnt care, if i didnt have to watch the games, or read every article in the paper. i just cant NOT do that , i cant just not care. i have to. which just shows that my love for the dodgers is just a rather large part of who i am. i know every player, their number and position. their stats and the usual line up. I dont know when this obsession began but thats how its always been. i remember in middle school quizzing my dad on the starting line up. those were the days--hollandsworth, mondesi, karros, piazza, NOMO. I still have my Nomo shirt which i bought circa 1996 right as he won rookie of the year--and i still wear it proudly. i even get emotional about the dodgers. i cried, literally tears rolling down, when they traded ceaser izturis and dave roberts. cried when we beat the giants in 2004 to clinch the NL West division with steve finley's grand slam. now the point of sharing all of this is to explain my recent achievement of doing something on my life list.

I have this list of things that i want to do in my lifetime. i only have about 15 things on this life list, which is rather a small list of things that i want to accomplish in my whole lifetime. but about 6 or 7 things on my list all revolve around one topic. now after reading the previous paragraph you know what that is. yup, the dodgers.

life list #3--get a tour of dodger stadium. CHECK.

last week my mom and i bought tickets and showed up for an 11.30 tour of the beautiful dodger stadium. it was so amazing!! our tour included going into the press box, the suites, the fancy restaurants, walking by the clubhouse...and the best part....hanging out in the dugout!!! i literally almost cried when i found out we could go in the dugout. and it was all i could talk about for the rest of the week. much to the dismay of my family. thanks to my mom for going with me and becoming my official photographer as she willing snapped tons of photos of me.

now this past week i was able to start to chip away at life list #15-- visit every major league ballpark in the country.

this goal is really going to be a life long project. matt and i decided a few years ago that we wanted to do this. and that maybe every year we should pick a city to visit and try and hit one or two stadiums while visiting. when mom suggested going to san diego for a little vaca i immediately did my research and discovered that the padres were going to be playing at home during our visit. petco park. done. it was awesome to be able to experience another stadium. had an oldschool/ modern vibe nestled into downtown san diego. we had a great time and great seats (ive got talent for buying great seats to baseball games). although it was hard cheering for the padres. chase was especially confused as he kept asking "where manny go?" and sang "lets root root root for the dodgers." that kid is already die hard.

for more on our trip to san diego, read my sisters blog here. note that i took most of the photos provided for this blog spot. apparently another good talent i posses. good photog skills.