The Aquarium

Last Saturday (I know, more than a week ago, now) Kelly and I went to the National Aquarium here in Baltimore. Kelly and I had such a fun time! It was awesome! There was an Australian exhibit, but I didn't like it because there were birds flying around, but you couldn't go back out the door, you had to go all the way through it to get out. It was so freaking scary! Kelly laughed at me and kept stopping to look at stuff. I didn't get many pictures except for the frilled neck lizard that was outside of the bird part.



Kel and I also went to the special exhibit Jellyfish Invasion! Turns out jellyfish can live in polluted water without a problem, so their predators die but they just keep breeding. There really is a jellyfish invasion!


We also went to a dolphin show which was fun. They were so cute!


There was also a special rain forest exhibit, and there were birds flying around in there too, but I actually got a couple pictures. Still scary, though.


The rest of the aquarium was fun. There were these dumb puffins that were swimming and swimming and swimming, but their beaks were against the glass so they weren't getting anywhere. It was pretty funny. We saw electric eels, poisonous frogs, sharks, stingrays, whale bones, and of course A LOT OF FISH!!! Including Nemo in his sea anemone and his pal Dorie, Dorey..Dori? I don't know how to spell her name but you know who I mean--the forgetful blue one who sounds a lot like Ellen DeGeneres. :)

Nemo!

Nemo's friend Ellen Bluefish!

This poor guy just kept looking at me
Ugly fish
Stupid puffin.
Cute swimmy-turtle
Stingray
Sharkbait ooh-ha-ha

The aquarium is not only full of awesome things, it's also an awesome building right on the Inner Harbor. The view was beautiful! After the aquarium, Kel and I ate at a Spanish restaurant called La Tasca that was situated right on the waterfront. The view was awesome from there too, but we didn't get any good pictures of it. All in all, we had such a fun weekend!



I loaded a whole bunch of pictures onto facebook, so to see more aquarium pictures, just click HERE.

Halloween with Kelly!

Kelly and I had such a fun Saturday! We were going to go up to Lancaster, PA for a reportedly amazing farmers market and for lunch, but we didn't get up as early as we wanted and decided we should plan more to do there if we were going to drive all that way anyway.

So then we decided to go to the aquarium. Baltimore's aquarium is also reportedly amazing! So we got all ready to go, and ran some errands, and by the time we were finally ready to head down to the Inner Harbor it was about 1:30. We decided that if we were going to spend all that money, we had better make sure we can spend as much time as we'd like, and since it closed at 5 and it would take us another 1/2 hour to get there, we'd do it next week. (Look for my post!) Since we were already driving around, we decided to check out some cool-looking stores that we've seen around and wanted to check out. We found a really cool hobby shop and a couple other random places. It was fun just to drive around with Kelly and talk about stuff and spend all day with him!

We came home before dark because my students warned me that being out after dark on Halloween in Baltimore is not safe. We tried watching a Frankenstein movie on Netflix because Kelly read the book, but the movie was so sucky, we couldn't even enjoy it by making fun of it. I didn't know that kind of sucky even existed. So we lit our Jack-o-Lantern that I carved earlier in the week and watched Penelope. It sounds like a boring day, but we both had so much fun just being together and talking. I love Kelly!

Here's my Jack-o-Lantern. Not as cool as last year's, but Batman is awesome.

Where the Wild Things Are

Today my husband and I went to a movie that was derived from a lovable children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. In fact, I grew up with it in my home and my brother even had a cute little Max in his wolf suit that went along with it. Kel and I have been looking forward to seeing this movie since we saw the previews, because it brought back childhood memories and it actually looked kinda cute. Today we got out a little late and barely missed the beginning of the 12:15 show, so we bought tickets for the 2:50 show and hung out up in White Marsh until then. One of our pass-the-time spots was a Barnes and Noble where we picked up the book and reread it for fun. While we were reading, I kind of wondered how they were going to make a full-length movie about a 30-ish word book. I had faith, though. It was in vain.

The movie started out kinda...crappy. The kid who played Max was cute, though. But Max was portrayed not as a young boy who was naughty one day, but a wild child who probably should have been sent to juvi. He trashed his sister's room, stood on the counter, yelled "FEED ME WOMAN!" at his mother, and then bit her. He wasn't sent to his room like in the book. He ran away, had an exhaustingly long sea voyage, and then found the island. There, he found the wild things. One was trashing the others' homes. He was pissed about something that was happening that was never quite clarified in the movie. Once Max arrived on the island, I kind of started thinking, "okay, now what?"

What happened was this: Max lied and told them he was magic and would explode their heads if they tried to eat him. (In the book he does a magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking then they make him king) the wild things were all terribly depressed, angry, and rude. They made Max their king and then they all whined about crap. Then stupid repetitive things happened like them running around, jumping, throwing dirt clods at each other and sleeping in a pile. They were all really ornery. As Kelly put it: "All it was was repetitive bickering." It wasn't exactly a feel-good cute children's movie. At all.

They build a fort and everyone was mad and monster-Carol loved monster-KW and KW hid Max inside her stomach (GROSS!) and Carol pulled off monster-Douglas' arm, which was then replaced with a stick. It was not funny. I think the movie can be summed up by the comments I heard in the theatre during the movie: "This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen." "Well, that sucked." "I've had enough of this." "What time is it!?" "Is this thing almost over?" (Okay, I said the last one.) A few futile claps came at the end, but I think it was in relief that we survived the movie. They died down fast. Quite frankly, I hope they put those reviews on the advertisements.

So really, it was a bad influence on children (hey kids, act horrible, bite your parents, run away, and lie a lot. In the end, you'll get cake! Seriously, in the end he was eating not only hot supper, but a huge slice of chocolate cake! You're REWARDING the kid for that?!) it was annoying and repetitive and depressing. I don't go to movies to listen to big stupid things whine and crazy-monster children terrorize their families. So if you want to see a movie based on a cute children's book that you love, Where the Wild Things Are is probably not your best option.

Despite the crappy movie, Kelly and I had a great time waiting for the 2:50 show. We went to Barnes and Noble, a place called Game Workshop that we weren't sure what was in there. It ended up being one of those one places that was full of those miniature game pieces (like Dungeons & Dragons-type-games) and people playing it and stuff. It was absolutely full of pasty guys who really need to see the sun. I think I was the only female they'd seen for quite sometime. Then we went to IKEA and got a garlic press! Woohoo!

Weekend Trip to Fredrick, Maryland

Last weekend, I picked Kelly up from work, we stopped by home for our stuff and the store for some Pepsi and we hit the road! We just went about 70 minutes west of Baltimore to Fredrick, MD. We stayed at a Best Western and ate delicious Indian food and just had a fun night walking around Fredrick. It is a cute town! It was nice to get away and not think of students or lesson planning or the vice-principal one single time!

Western Maryland is so pretty!

The next day we headed back to downtown Fredrick and went to a Civil War Medicine museum. (No photography allowed there, so no pictures yet.) Unfortunately, we got there a little too early, so the museum wasn't open yet. We walked up and down the main drag and enjoyed the window displays. Then we went to the museum. It was actually really interesting. I learned a lot, but the coolest thing is this: In history, Civil War doctors are always portrayed as butchers who just hacked off limbs no matter what. Well, there were a lot of amputations going on, but that really was the best thing they could do to save the soldiers' lives because the lead balls that they were shot with would penetrate deep and then smash against the bone, mangling the bone and flattening the minnie ball. Gangrene was almost sure to get you, too, so really, there was no saving the limb. So really, amputating is tough, but it ended up saving a lot of lives. I kind of knew all that stuff before, but I didn't know that amputation was the best thing to do. I just thought it was the quickest and easiest.

After the museum we went to Antietam. It was pretty cool. I'm not very good at my Civil War history, so I don't know much about it other than it was the bloodiest battle in the Civil War, so I didn't get much from all the signs saying this is where such-and-such happened. But we checked out all the memorials and read all the signs and I kind of liked just looking out on the hills and trying to imagine all those soldiers fighting and dying there. It was hard to imagine such a bloody thing happening at such a beautiful place.

(Random-Cool fact #1: I wear my hair curly now pretty much all the time. My straight hair probably won't make many reappearances until I'm back in Utah. :( I miss it....Utah and straight, shiny hair.)


We also checked out a cemetery, which was really beautiful and peaceful.
(Random-cool fact #2: I took this picture to show my Utah friends & family what Maryland "mountains" look like. They're HUGE!)


The real thing we went to Western Maryland for was to hike part of the Appalachian Trail. I think we ended up going about a week too early to see all the trees changing. Things were still pretty green, but there was some beautiful orange and yellow too. The drive up there was gorgeous. It was nice to hike, though. (It was kind of more of a walk without pavement, but that's okay. As you saw in the picture, the mountains here are kind of....lacking.) The day was beautiful and Kelly and I just talked the whole 6 or 7 miles. It was so fun to spend the whole day with him!
(Random-Cool face #3: I took a picture a lot like this one of my dad on top of Angel's Landing in Zion National Park around this time last year. Click to see it! If it's too big to see right, try right-clicking and going down to "view image" It worked for me, anyway.)

At the overlook that we made our turning back point




When we got back to the car, we ate some sandwiches and then headed back to Baltimore and lesson planning and students and Michael's and Mrs. Cooper, but we had such a wonderful weekend, we were okay with going back to work.


The sunset was so beautiful on our way home, I thought it was a very fitting end to our wonderful weekend trip.

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.