Today Was a Good Day.

Believe me, if you had been inside my head this morning when I woke up, you would have been as surprised as I am about how this day turned out. :)

I was beyond exhausted when I woke up. I stayed up too late last night (and we're talking the wee hours of 10:00pm here), finishing up school work and refining the next day's lesson plan. Pretty much the only thing that kept me from calling in sick was knowing that I was responsible for today's Spanish classes because I was beginning a unit and delaying it would throw EVERYTHING off. So I hauled myself out of bed and made it work.

Upon arriving to school, I was reasonably nervous about teaching my unit. It's about why we learn other languages and focuses on the culture and life of Cuba. Basically, it's about 100% different from the curriculum that GMS uses (TPRS, for you educators out there) and I didn't know what to expect or how the kids would receive it. Instead of just listening to a story and mastering vocabulary words and structures, I was asking them to analyze events and motives and articulate how they felt about them.

To my surprise, it went over so much better than I thought it would! The meat of my lesson focused on making comparisons between life in the U.S. and life in Cuba. For example, did you know that the average Cuban worker makes only $0.33 a day? I passed out bags containing 33 cents so that the kids could see this figure and hold the coins through the bags to connect to their learning. After the comparisons, I told a shortened version of the Elian Gonzalez story and showed a newscast from the morning that the INS personnel forcibly removed Elian from his uncle's home in Miami.

The students were surprised and made uncomfortable by the video clips and stories I was telling them, as I had hoped they would be. We had a mini-discussion on who was at fault, who was acting illegally, etc. Back in 2000 when this whole fiasco was going on, the central issue was the custody battle between the uncle and Elian's dad back in Cuba. However, the media latched on to the supposed "illegal immigrant" issue and blew that up even bigger than the custody battle.

But did you know that Elian was in fact living in the U.S. legally? Back in 1966, lawmakers passed the Cuban Adjustment Act, which says that any Cuban person fleeing the country as a refugee was admitted entrance to the U.S. without prejudice because of the dangerous living conditions and totalitarian communist government. That person can stay in the U.S. for up to a year, provided that they pursue naturalization and citizenship. In 1995, the Clinton administration made some revisions to this Act, which stipulated that any immigrant that was intercepted in the water between the coasts of Cuba and the U.S. would be sent back to Cuba. But, should that immigrant walk ashore in Florida, he or she is granted that protection afforded by the Cuban Adjustment Act. If you don't believe me, check out this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy

Elian washed up on the shore on Thanksgiving Day. So technically, he legally attained the right to stay here as a Cuban refugee because he wasn't intercepted in the water. "Pisar la Tierra" (which means 'to step on or tread the land') is and has been an important ideal for Cubans since the exodus began in the 50s and 60s. It not only holds emotional importance as recognition of a dangerous journey completed safely, but it also holds legal importance in that they can stay here without fear of being deported.

It was really great to share this kind of story with my kids today because they don't often get the chance to really think about and chew on issues. They're spoon-fed the Spanish language, but they don't get to interact much with the culture. I had one student tell me that he enjoyed today's class simply because he felt comfortable raising his hand to volunteer an answer because he knew it was a correct answer. This student in particular has been really struggling in Spanish so far (Ds and some Fs) because he has trouble keeping up with the fast pace of the class and how the material is taught. I could see from today that his grades are not for lack of trying. He was really interested in these issues and he articulated himself well when I asked the class for their thoughts. I was really happy to see that this lesson achieved the goal of showing the lower-achieving students that they can still succeed in Spanish class.

Unfortunately, I can't do an entire curriculum of culture and discussions and deep thinking. But I am thankful for the days that I do get for doing this kind of thing because it gives the opportunity for different students to shine instead of the same old fast thinkers all the time. :)

I Wish I Could Just Sit and Watch SpEd Basketball All Day

Hmm, a week later, it's probably time to update. :)

Health-wise, things have gotten neither better nor worse. It's just kind of staying the same. And for right now, I am okay with that. I know how far I can push myself on a certain amount of energy and I know how much work I can get done with that energy. I'm usually just about drained once I get home from school, but thankfully, my family and prof have been understanding about me getting my work done and giving extensions when needed.

It's been a bit of a rough week in Room 200, but only in 6th hour, so that's a good thing. We started a new trimester on Monday, which means two new Intro to Theater classes for me and about 50 new names and faces to learn. :) 6th hour Spanish has a handful of troublemakers that I'm still figuring out how to handle. They certainly test my patience and it's a battle with them every day. The other 3 Spanish classes are going pretty well though, so that gives me a boost in my confidence in myself as a teacher.

A highlight for this week happened today: the Special Olympics Basketball Tournament! Grandville MS hosts the tourney and invites Caledonia MS and Hudsonville MS. Each school forms 2 teams out of their Special Education students, and those 6 teams play each other in various combinations for the better part of the school day. Teachers are encouraged to bring their classes down to the gym for part of their class period to cheer on the players and show their support.

So that's what we did during 4th hour Theater today! I absolutely loved it. It brought back many really fabulous memories of Special Needs Week out at the Grounds. I just love the spirit that special needs kids have. It was really great to see the kids working together and passing the ball to each other. The higher functioning ones would pass the ball to the lower functioning ones, and they even gave players on the other team a second chance to shoot the ball if they caught the rebound. I was just so proud of them. :)

Time for bed for this little girl. Dios os cuide y os proteja. (which means "May God take care of you and protect you")

The Results Are In...

Good news: My blood work came back just fine, nothing abnormal!
Bad news: My blood work came back just fine, nothing abnormal....

The purpose of the blood work was to check for contributing factors for anemia, such as low iron. The iron's fine, the Vitamin D is a little low (but that's to be expected since we're nearing the end of winter and haven't seen much sun lately), and my blood cell counts are all good.

Even my thyroid is fine. No hypothyroidism here.
No pain in my limbs and back, so it's not fibromyalgia.
So what's next?

It's unlikely that it's a sleep disorder since fatigue is the only symptom I have. I sleep at least 8 hours per night, often 9 or 10, and I don't wake up more than once per night. I sleep all the way through, I don't snore, and none of my roommates has said that I have woken up gasping for breath as if I'd stopped breathing in my sleep (these are all symptoms of sleep apnea). It would appear I sleep just fine. I just don't feel rested when I wake up. I feel TIRED when I wake up.

My doctor said that this indicates some sort of disconnect with my sleep - that is, I sleep, but I don't REST. He said if the blood work comes back normal (which it has), and a sleep specialist has nothing to say (he'll decide on a referral to one tomorrow), then it's probably Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or CFS.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to be sure because there's no test for CFS and there's no cure. It's more like a diagnosis that comes after ruling out a bunch of other things, which is what my doctor is in the process of doing. It's a syndrome that some doctors don't even take seriously, which makes me a little frustrated. I already have trouble convincing people that this exhaustion is real, and now DOCTORS are saying it's not real? Good grief.

So anyway, that's where I'm at. Thank you so much for all of your prayers the last two weeks. I really appreciate all of you. :)

Lil' Health Update..

Eh, it's probably time to get that "Why I am exhausted every minute of the day" thing looked at.
So I have a physical scheduled for this Wednesday morning before school to check all the regularly-functioning body parts and some blood work specifically for the tiredness bidness.

Those that have spent a significant amount of time with me know that I do not like to admit defeat. I do not like to admit weakness. I do not like admitting that I can't do something.

And I do NOT like going to the doctor.

I try to avoid it whenever possible. The last time I went to the doctor for an illness was when I was in kindergarten and had croup. I don't think I even went to the doctor when I got chicken pox because my brothers had it right before me and my parents knew the routine by then. Except for seasonal colds, I maintain near-perfect (or at least, passable) physical health. KEEP ME AWAY FROM THE DOCTOR.

But as much as I hate going to the doctor, I need answers. I need to figure this out.

I can't keep living like this, with no energy. Today I was operating on about 60%. On most grading scales, that's failing. I'm failing! But in the life I lead, failure is not an option. A "Body and Mind Failure" Day does not exist.

So we keep on keepin' on.

If you are a person who prays and you feel so inclined, please pray for me. It's been a rough several weeks. And I'm afraid it may be awhile before it gets better.

Op-Ed: Do You Suffer? Thank God.

"God didn't make cancer (or depression, death, poverty, etc) because cancer (depression, death, poverty, etc) is not good. So don't go blaming God for something He didn't make." (Same Kind of Different As Me, 2008)

Is your mind blown yet? Mine was after reading these sentences this morning.

And it made me think: do I blame God for the pills I have to take, for the energy I don't have, and for the demons that circle my bed and won't let me sleep at night?

To be honest, I don't blame God very often. But the reason is pretty ignoble: I'm lazy. I know in my head that the bad things in my life are not God's fault, so why waste the energy yelling at Him and laying the blame on Him for things that were never His idea in the first place? Why get all worked up and more frustrated than I already am by yelling at someone I can't see over an illness that others can't see? I know He'd hear me, so it's not for a lack of faith that I abstain from blaming God. I'm really just lazy.

Okay. So it's not God's FAULT that I suffer, He didn't do this PURPOSELY.
BUT - why does He ALLOW it to happen?

Oh, there's a question that has yet to be answered after centuries upon centuries of the world's tears.

In fact, there's an entire branch of thinking and studying  that tries to rationalize the relationship between God and suffering, and it's called theodicy. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much of a theologian. I'd rather know things in simple terms and be able to explain them in simple terms to people who don't speak Theologese. So here's my theodicy, in simple terms, the way I know how.

God didn't create the evil things in this world. He's INCAPABLE of creating evil. As a 100% good being, He created us to be 100% good beings to share the world with Him. Since we messed that plan up, He now pushes through the evil to be with us and share His good with us. God is certainly powerful enough to wipe out evil forever, but would we really need Him after that? We certainly proved (and continue to prove) that we think we can handle everything without God. Eve figured she could do whatever she wanted with the infinite freedom God gave to her and Adam, and that quickly became doing something God told her not to do. She figured she knew better than (or at least as well as) God when it came to her well-being. Every single one of us is guilty of this.

Without evil, we'd be immature children, dependent on no one, least of all on God. As it is, many of us only turn to God when something goes wrong, right? So if nothing went wrong, we wouldn't have to turn to Him at all. We would just frolic through sunshine-y life, waiting for God to appear when faced with evil. In fact, I think that after awhile, we wouldn't even notice God's intervention in our lives because we'd take it for granted.

Does that scene of sunshine-y perfect life even include human free will? If we don't have the opportunity to face evil and make a decision about how we handle it, where is the free will? We would be children sheltered so completely from evil that we would cease to even be human. Think about it:

If there's never anything to get upset about, the range of human emotion disappears.
If there's never any reason to mourn, there's never a reason to celebrate.
If there's never any death, we would cease to value life.
If there's never a reason for tears, there's never a reason for smiles.
If there's never any sickness, there's no reason for healing.
And if there's never any evil, we would cease to recognize good.

I think the reason that the prospect of Heaven is so absolutely breath-taking is that we know what it's like to live without Heaven. We will appreciate it so much more after knowing what suffering is. If we stayed in Heaven without ever having to experience suffering, we probably wouldn't appreciate Heaven all.

God allows us to suffer because He knows we would never need Him without it. We would cease to see His hand in the events of our life because, really: what are events? We characterize them as good or bad, and without bad, it would be an endless succession of good. And life would become meaningless.

So I guess you could say that God lets us suffer because He loves us so much.
He would rather that we live, truly deeply emotionally live, than simply exist without knowing the difference.

The Summer of 10,000 Pages

I'll be back at the Grounds for summer #5 in just a few short weeks. Okay, like 14. Regardless, I'd rather being laying on a beach than looking out at snow, even if that snow did close school today.

I start off every summer with the goal of hanging out with co-workers and campers more and around the end of June I always realize the same thing: none of the college staff EVER has off at the same time (unless we start hanging out after 11pm) and I inevitably end up sitting in the cottage alone in a weird (and not happy) mood. Don't get me wrong, it's not like we're never able to hang out outside of work, it's just that I always seem to forget how tired I get after working all day and how early I end up going to bed most nights. :)

So here's a new plan that I just came up with:

THE SUMMER OF 10,000 PAGES

I am going to attempt to read 10,000 pages between the time that student teaching ends and classes begin again in the fall. It's 123 days, or about 17 weeks. If I figure that a book has an average of 250 pages, that's 40 books to read. Oh, and Kindle pages will be equal to paper pages.
I'll use this handy-dandy blog to keep track of my progress and fill you all in on what titles I'm devouring.

I can do this, right? I guess we'll see how close I can get. :)

Tired of Being Tired

I am always tired.

Seriously. I feel tired every minute of every day. I have yawned in front of all of my six classes at least once. The funny part is that they don't really know what to do with that. They yawn in class plenty, but they're not used to the teachers doing it.

I never wake up feeling refreshed or rested. I never wake up feeling AWAKE. Some days, I feel like I don't even wake up at all.

Throughout college, I got at least 8 hours of sleep per night. I made sure of it. I can't operate properly on much less than that. It had to be exceptional circumstances (or a vacation) for me to even consider going to bed past midnight.

Since the beginning of student teaching, I've been passing out around 8, 8:30.

WHY IS IT NOT ENOUGH?!

Am I not supposed to be in the prime of my life? Past the teenage years, where you supposedly need all that extra sleep, but not yet into the adult years where your kids and your job wear you out?

22 years old and feeling like 88. I don't have the energy to do anything outside of school and/or work. And sometimes, not even that. I had a day or two last semester where I decided to skip class (usually afternoons) because I simply couldn't keep going.

Student teaching is just beating me up. It is mentally and emotionally strenuous work.
Will I ever get used to it? Is this how my life is going to be from now on?
If so, how can I even imagine adding a husband, kids, and countless other activities when I can't even stay awake past 8?

I am so frustrated with this. (Could you tell?)

I AM SO FREAKING TIRED.

And without God's promise from Matthew 11:28, I might have given up a long time ago.