Being Married to Kelly is the Best!

Hey all, I just thought I'd write a little bit about some of the fun things we've been up to lately. Mostly we take a lot of naps in the afternoons after exhausting days on our feet. Last week I came back from work found this at the door:

And this on the bed:

So we ate the M&Ms and took a nap.

Then we woke up with bedhead.

But we do really fun stuff too! Last Thursday (the 24th), I got out of school, drove home and got Kelly and we drove all the way to Philadelphia and went to a Regina Spektor concert! But first we went to a really nice Italian restaurant and ate out on the sidewalk. It was so much fun!! Regina Spektor is so awesome and Kelly and I had such a fun time. We were standing all night, and I am up all day when I teach (whenever movies show teachers sitting at their desks, they LIE! Teachers never sit down.) and my feet and legs haven't hurt that bad since our wedding day, but just like that day, SO WORTH IT! Of course we both forgot our cameras, but it's okay. It was awesome. She even messed up our favorite song "That Time". The whole thing is "Hey remember that time I...[insert crazy-random thing in here, like "tried to save a pigeon with a broken wing? A street cat got him by morning and I had to bury pieces of his body in our building's playground."] She was like "Hey remember that time I...what'd I do?" It was cute. We got back kind of late, but we both made it to work on time in the morning.

Last Saturday, Kelly and I went to a movie called Whip It. It's Drew Barrymore's debut as a director and stars Ellen Page, the actress from Juno. Whip It is about roller derby. It was actually a really fun movie and it was a special early showing, so Kelly and I got free T-shirts! Woohoo! Don't we look adorable?

In the Classroom

Things in Baltimore have certainly picked up for us. Kelly's been promoted at work and just finished a huge project at the store that required him to go in at 5AM for two weeks straight. It made me ornery just because I had to drive him there that early, even though I got to come back home and sleep for an hour longer. But Kelly is always cheerful, even when waking up at 4:30 in the morning. (No human being should be awake between 4 and 5 AM unless they are mobsters planning to whack the chief of police. Seriously.)

When I'm actually conscious, things have certainly gotten busier, but also more enjoyable. I went from sitting in classes hearing "scaffolded learning," "differentiation," "classroom management," and "let's capture [fill in the blank here] on paper while we're thinking about it" over and over again (Capture. Everyone says it here. I don't know why.) to setting up my classroom and then finally filling it with students.

Teaching is so stressful! When I was in high school I never realized how hard teachers work. Lesson planning, setting up a classroom, dealing with that student who writes "F--- this class" on your classroom sign in, writing worksheets, and looking up that stuff you don't remember is a lot to do. (Thank you to all my teachers!) I always thought teachers had it pretty good: holidays and summers off, off work at 3. The only part that sounded not-so-fun was being to work at 7AM. But really, I've stayed at school late, and then I come home and work on teaching stuff here, too. But despite the stress of trying to give my students the education they deserve, at the end of the day I feel good. I'm doing something useful, and hopefully will be able to help a few of my students. I know I'm not exactly meeting the "excellent teacher" bar yet, but at least I'm passionate, and my students already know I care about them.

My classes are 100% African American and I've heard a lot about being white. One student told me I am the only white person he's ever liked. They like to laugh at me when I don't understand their slang, or even just the way they say things, and get frustrated when they don't understand my white/Utah accent. But we get along pretty well. They just love teasing me about my baby face, but I refuse to tell anyone how old I really am (especially because I have a few 21-year-old students.) One guy said "You guys! A real lady never tells her age, and this a real lady here."

The school I teach at is brand new this year, so a lot of things are not yet organized, including the scheduling. For the first week, they just grouped kids together and put them in some classes, so I have juniors and seniors in my 9th grade US History class, and they were not happy at all. I had a mini riot on Tuesday in 2nd period, because they were all frustrated with the lack of order and some classes they need to graduate are not yet offered at the school. We haven't hired a gym teacher or any foreign language teachers yet, although both classes are required for graduation. I was able to talk to them and they realized that I'm there to help them graduate, and even though the school is still disorganized, they just need to remember it's brand new, and I'm trying to make my classroom as functional as possible and we're all in this together. We ended up having a discussion and getting the principal and guidance counselor to come in and talk about the classes they need and getting everyone the right schedule hopefully by next week. The school tried a new temporary schedule partway through the week and as I was walking down the hall right before school started I passed a group of girls from one of my classes and they said "Hey! Mrs. A!" and then grabbed their new schedules and said "I hope we still have her!" I don't think they meant me to hear that last part, but it made me feel so good!

I started teaching content on Wednesday, because I already went over my syllabus and rules and procedures. It went so well! After I taught the material they got in groups and worked on posters about Reconstruction. I gave them National Geographics to cut up and markers and glue and they turned out so great. So anyway, I made it through my first week, and so did all of my students and now for some PICTURES!

The back of my classroom! (the front is just a blackboard and my desk full of paperclips and a latest-in-Soviet-Technology computer on top.)


My favorite poster--I had to edit out the names, though.

Well, there's a little update from the Aherns! We're still living happily and we're very much in love. Oh yeah, and we are nursery leaders in church now. Sometimes I think my 2-3 year olds are better behaved than my high school students, though. :) Love you all!

It doesn't rain like this in Utah

The rain just pours here. I like it. At least when I don't have to go out in it. Last week it was raining like this and I had to run down to my car and grab something and came back soaked. I was only in it for like 30 seconds! Luckily for this storm on Tuesday, Kelly and I just waited it out in our apartment while it rumbled from the thunder. I wished it was dark so we could have seen the lightning better.

This is the view from our balcony. Most of it's tree, but we don't mind that at all. It keeps our apartment shady and in the mornings we wake up to birds singing and cicadas doing whatever they do. Those are the weirdest sounding things. It's like there's a rattlesnake sitting in the tree just outside your third story window. Anyway, things here are great, though nothing exciting, as I'm sure you can tell by what I'm writing about on here. I just figured it had been awhile. I start teaching on Aug. 31. I still don't know if I'm teaching American Government (hope not!) or U.S. History. Or there's a slim chance I could be teaching World History, which I would love, but it probably won't happen this year, but I'll likely be teaching it next year. Yeah...so....I just wanted to let you all know we're still alive and doing great.

Our New Apartment!

Here's some pictures of our new apartment in Towson, Maryland.

The view from our entryway. On your right is the kitchen:
We LOVE our red appliances and dishes!

Go through the kitchen to the dining room...it was empty for a long time:


Move on from the kitchen to the living room (with a balcony!) That room with the window on the right is our dining room again.

Our lovely computer set up on the floor

Since we didn't have a dining room table for a long time we ate at our "dinner boxes"

Moving on through the hallway with AMPLE closet space :)


Keep going straight and you hit our very white bathroom (it looks so much better now with our red shower curtain!)

Or turn right and: the bedroom! (Also with wonderful closet space.)

And we just got some new bookshelves and lamps for our bedroom! Now we actually have light in there at night.

And now some new furniture! We went to Ikea and got us a desk and a couple chairs so we didn't have to sit on the ground ALL the time.


As we were carrying our stuff up from Ikea, our neighbor was moving out and gave us a dining table and four chairs! Mostly matching...well, the price was right, anyway: FREE!Then my mom's cousin Lieu, who lives in Crofton got a new couch, so they gave us their old one, which we went and picked up last weekend with a Home Depot truck. We were almost home, and it started to rain :( but it turned out okay.

There's the Ahern's (very) humble abode!

Starting Our Life Together

-->Kelly and I are finally married! It was a beautiful day. And also a bit of a blur. We were married in the Logan, Utah LDS Temple and took lots of pictures afterward. It was SO windy. In every one of the pictures taken outside of the temple doors, my Uncle Kevin is crouched behind me holding my veil down.

We got to the luncheon at the Bluebird as most of our guests were finishing up. We got a round of applause when we walked into our banquet room. I have to say, even after being in all those recitals at SUU, it still is really weird when you walk into a room and everyone claps for you.

The reception was wonderful. Our cakes fell apart the night before, but I didn’t care. Someone (I’m assuming my mom or grandma or aunts) managed to put them on display at the reception and they looked really good. We cut the cake and tossed the bouquet and garter and I danced with my dad (one of my favorite parts of the day) and with my new husband. Mostly, though, we just talked and talked and talked with so many wonderful people who came to see us.

I was so excited to see so many friends, Lindsey & Steve, Becky, Kate, and Derek from SUU, Sarah and Tiffany, some childhood friends, and so many loving ward members from Bountiful and both wards in Pleasant View, as well as lots of family friends, and most especially family members. Every one of my aunts and uncles and cousins came from California, Tennessee, Springville, Colorado, and Japan. And my grandmas from Arizona and Springville. Of course it was also wonderful to see Kelly’s whole family, and meet many of his friends. And I was so glad Nariman, Kelly’s oldest and best friend, and one of my best friends too, was there as Kel’s best man. Nariman looks great in a tux. I LOVE Kelly!

We spent a couple nights in the Ogden Marriott and drove around in our highly decorated Mercedes, courtesy of Nariman and Kelly’s brothers. Then we opened gifts and packed up Darcy, our little Ford Escort, and hit I-80 on Monday morning. Our first stop was Cheyenne, Wyoming. On the way we stopped at Fort Bridger. We felt really lucky we didn’t have to cross the country this way!

Then we headed to Omaha, Nebraska. We stopped at a highly-advertised Pony Express station and felt severely let down, but we did happen upon a Military Vehicles Museum, and that was really cool.

Overall, Nebraska is unending. It’s pretty, but there’s only one scene. I felt the sign on this gas station summed up Nebraska nicely.

The next day was our drive to Chicago. That was a REALLY fun day! We stopped at a Danish windmill museum in Elkhorn, Iowa. It turns out that it’s a whole Danish community. I bought my friend Becky a postcard, because I was thinking of her the whole time because she’s Danish. We also went to a Danish Immigrant museum, which had a whole floor dedicated to Victor Borge. We ended up our stay in Elkhorn by eating at a Danish restaurant. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but it was TASTY!

(Victor Borge's first piano)

We spent longer than we meant to in Elkhorn, but I’m glad we did. I think it was my favorite stop. After that we stopped at the sight of the first train robbery (also had that pony-express-let-down feeling.) and Trainland USA. That was actually pretty sweet. It was a ginormous train exhibit. There were little people and buildings and a little working drive-in movie and lights and trains, trains, trains! Imagine taking an entire home, filling it with train tracks and miniature cities, and there you go: Trainland, USA. And we also crossed the Mississippi River.

(I told Kelly to get on the tracks and make his robber face. This is what I got.)

We got to Chicago that night. I hated driving there and finally made Kelly drive after we’d gone around the same block a couple of times because of the one-way streets. He was such a trooper and got us to the parking garage and drove all the next day. We stayed in a really nice hotel, but were a little uncomfortable, because we looked terrible after being in the car all day, and we couldn’t get our suitcases down off the roof of our car because of the parking garage, so we just had to use what we could out of Kelly’s backpack and what the hotel had. Kelly had a change of clothes for the next day. I didn’t :(.

We spent most of the next day at the Chicago Art Institute seeing priceless works of art all day. It was so cool to see actual paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Georgia O’Keefe, Toulousse Lautrec, and Salvador Dali. My family has this game called Masterpiece where you bid on paintings and hope you do get the million dollar painting and don’t get any forgeries, but anyway, it was really fun to go through and see a bunch of the paintings from the game. It was also the museum from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, so some of the paintings made me think of that, like Cameron looking at the little girl’s face in Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. We stayed for hours and had a really fun time. After that we went to Millennium Park and looked at all the weird stuff there and got soaked by the rain.

(This is our reflection in the following)

That day we drove to Cleveland and stayed in a cheap little motel with very nice employees (and soap that made my exhausted self giggle. That Sleepy Bear is so seductive!)

(Cleveland!)

The next day we headed to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, but when we found out admission was $22 apiece and we knew we didn’t have that much time to spend there, we decided to save our money and maybe go back someday when we had more time (and jobs.) We were also anxious to finish the last leg of our trip and get to Baltimore. We drove through the rest of Ohio, Pennsylvania, a corner of West Virginia, and all the way across Maryland. Maryland is a beautiful state. It is so green! There are huge trees everywhere and it’s very hilly. I am missing my mountains in Utah, and I’m REALLY missing the dry air and my well-behaved hair, but Maryland is home for now, and my hair will just have to be Medusa-like for a while.

We spent the first two nights in Maryland at my mom’s cousin’s house. She and her husband were so kind to give us a nice place to stay. Their house and neighborhood are lovely. We got there late Friday night and spent all day Saturday apartment hunting. We actually found a very nice place for a great price right where we need it. On Sunday we went to Sacrament meeting in the ward where we’d be if we got that apartment, and then went over and leased it and moved in! It’s so good to have a place of our own! Of course, we slept on the floor that night, but I couldn’t take it, so Kelly went the next day and bought us a bed! It was delivered the next day, so only two nights on the floor. I lived.

That week was my Baltimore Teach For America Induction. I spent all day meeting other corps members, who are all awesome people, and learning about Baltimore and teaching. On Thursday I was hired to teach Social Studies at a new high school that is opening this year. I am so excited!

So there we have it: life since marriage. Kelly and I are SO happy to be together and having such awesome adventures together. I’ll update later with pictures of my apartment!

I love my husband!

(P.S. I don't know what's up with my font in this post. I tried to fix it, but it just won't! So you'll just have to deal with it please.)

Family

All of my family came from various parts of the world for my wedding. It was so good to see them all, and also amazing to see how much all my cousins have grown up. Mark and Nana came with their three adorable boys all the way from Japan. When they got to my house they were jet-lagged and exhausted. Bryan had been playing Pokemon with the two older boys, but then he came up and told us that they were all asleep and to go look at Ethan.


The poor kid was so tired he fell asleep with his hand still in his bag of Cheetos.

Trying to Catch Up

A lot has happened since I last blogged, including my wedding, moving across the country, and finding a new job. I promise a post is coming that covers all that, but first, I wanted to just post a couple things while I'm perfecting that one.

A few days before our wedding, Kelly and I met Lindsey and Steve Corry at the Salt Lake Temple. Kelly said that in Uruguay, many members save and dream their whole lives just to go once to the Salt Lake Temple, and it just wouldn't be right for us to live in Utah our whole lives and not go once before we moved to Baltimore. I had a wonderful experience, and it was so good to be there with Lindsey and Steve.


When we came out, it was just beginning to rain. Kel and I had parked quite a ways down the road, so we had some walking to do, whereas the Corrys parked at the Conference Center across the street, so we bid our farewells and set off. A few steps out of Temple Square, the rain just started pouring. By the time we got to our car we looked like we had been swimming in our clothes. It was so much fun! And we got some great pictures out of it, too.