BEDA Day 2: The Little Monsters

If you've known me at least a year, or have been reading my blog for that long, you may recall that last summer I worked at a local middle school SACC (school-age child care) program, and I hated it. I felt overwhelmed because my boss had been doing her job practically by herself for years and just assumed I would understand things that seemed obvious to her. The paperwork at the site was extremely unorganized and I felt like I couldn't find anything. By the end of the summer the number of kids attending was so low that I was only working 15-20 hours a week. Because of our low numbers, I was often the only adult around when I was working. And most of the kids were so snotty that I only actually liked about four of them.

Because of budget cuts, the district's middle school program had to close, so this year I'm working for the same program at one of our elementary sites, and my situation couldn't be more different. My site director is extremely organized, and there's always another adult around who takes my questions seriously, even the tiny ones that I feel silly for asking. Our numbers have been so high this summer that instead of working 28 hours a week, as I was originally scheduled, I've been working at least 35 hours since the second week of summer. I get along really well with all of the other teachers (and it's a bonus that one of my best friends is working the same hours as me), and even when our kids drive me crazy, I still love them. Because the middle school program closed, the rising sixth graders have been allowed to attend our program, and our ages range all the way down to preschool. When we break into groups I usually have the 4th-6th grade group, but we all have plenty of opportunities to work with all of the kids. At these ages, they're still so sweet that even if they get really mad at you over something, they've forgotten it by the next day and you're bound to get hugs again.

The only downside to the job is that I'm absolutely exhausted and usually starving when I get home, because the little monsters wear me out! We stay really busy. On Monday afternoons we go to the small movie theater in town that's owned by a school district alumnus for a free kids' movie. On Wednesday and Friday afternoons we go to the pool. Thursdays often mean full-day field trips, such as to the zoo or local parks or Sports Ohio. When we stay at school all day, I usually teach a mini dance class for a group of kids.

We're currently working on a piece of choreography to Taio Cruz's "Dynamite," which the kids have been singing constantly all summer. I'm actually borrowing my sister's choreography, and I told the kids this yesterday, which led to a storm of questions, including about five kids asking how old my sister is. (They don't listen to each other...or me, most of the time.) I said she's eighteen, and they all went, "Cool!!" Then someone asked me how old I am, a question I've gotten periodically all summer, and one I don't mind answering because I think they definitely have a right to be curious about their teachers' lives. Before I could answer, though, one of my little boys, Matthew, shouts indignantly, "You never ask a girl how old she is!!" After I stopped laughing, I told the kids that that's a good rule to follow when you're talking to a grown-up you don't know very well, but it's okay to ask questions of the teachers because they know us well. Little moments like that totally make this job worthwhile. :)

BEDA Day 1: Summer on Fast Forward

Look, it's me!! I remembered that I have a blog!!

As atonement for my grievous lack of activity on this site over the last 2.75 months, I've decided I'm going to participate in BEDA, or Blog Every Day in August. (BEDA was started by the author Maureen Johnson back in 2009 and originally took place in April, but August works too.) Yes, I know today is August 2nd. But I'm not that far behind and I'll go for a whole 31 days by blogging on September 1st as well, since I'm sure I'll have some kind of sappy, Hogwarts Express thing to type that day.

Obviously my world didn't come screeching to a halt the day after I graduated college. The fact that I've graduated still hasn't fully sunk in, because this summer feels exactly the same as each of the past three summers. However, my friends who have yet to graduate are starting to talk about heading back to school on Facebook, and I'm starting to feel pretty sad again.

I'm glad to say I've had a really good summer so far. I'll just kind of recap everything here and spend the next few posts talking about various elements in detail. I was a bridesmaid for the first time, in my best friend's wedding, and my car got attacked by the Whomping Willow. (Yes, those events are related.) I started working at an elementary school child care program, and all things considered, I'm really enjoying it. My sister graduated from high school, and last night I tagged along on her first round of college shopping. And of course, I've had lots of Harry Potter-related adventures.

I dubbed the summer of 2007, the one right before I started college, "the summer of Harry Potter," because the fifth movie and the seventh and final book were both release in July. At that time, I couldn't possibly have imagined any of the things I've done in the last couple of months. For starters, I went to LeakyCon 2011 and visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for the first time. I've been to four wizard rock concerts this summer, not counting the ones that took place at LeakyCon. I celebrated BAMFmas, also known as Neville Longbottom's birthday, with some of my newest and closest friends, which included destroying a horcrux at 11:00 at night in the parking lot of a movie theater with the sword of Gryffindor, which looked suspiciously like a light-up, inflatable lightsaber. And I woke up at 4:30 in the morning on Harry and Jo's birthday to register for the beta version of Pottermore.

All of these things and more will be explained in the coming days, and I hope you'll stick around for my first BEDA adventure!

The end of the road

I will graduate college in about 14 hours. I can't even handle it right now. I have this weird feeling that the world is going to end when I go to bed tomorrow night (well, technically today, but I don't mean when I go to bed an hour from now). I can't imagine waking up Monday morning. It's like my brain can't even picture how that could occur.

I don't even know why I'm posting this except that I really want to write and all of my notebooks and journals are packed away. I don't understand how everything happened so fast.

Look who's still alive!

Let's ignore the fact that it's been four months since I last posted here. I've been slightly busy. If you're interested in reading a blog that is updated much more frequently than mine (and is also much funnier), you should check out my sister's blog about her experiences as a senior in high school.

First of all, I have to point out that it's been pretty darn good to be a nerd this week! Monday was Wizarding Independence Day, Wednesday was Intergalactic Star Wars Day, and today is Hanko de Mayo, and Helen Hunt finally saw the Helen Hunt Song!! Power of the Internet FTW.

Okay, so all of those links were really an attempt to procrastinate talking about the really big thing that's happening later this week: GRADUATION. My feelings about this are so mixed that it's really hard to talk about it. As much as I didn't want to graduate high school, that felt like a beginning of something new as much as it felt an ending. This right now just feels like an ending. I had my last meal in Lang cafeteria with my friends today. I left the Foreign Language building and the Theatre building for probably the last time. And I keep looking around my room and knowing that when I get home, I can't just stick all of this stuff in the attic till I get it out again in August. I'm going to have to actually sort through it all and put it all away, a thought that kind of makes me want to defenestrate myself right now. (10 points to me for working my favorite English word into that last sentence!)

One thing I'm glad about is that I really managed to have a fantastic last semester at B-W, despite the gargantuan amount of work I had to do. (I am apparently on a roll with the big words today.) I started watching Doctor Who in January, and I'm now almost to the start of season five, and I am completely addicted! In February, my friends Annika and Jess and I made a semi-spontaneous (come on, we're all Ravenclaws) trip down to Cincinnati in the middle of the week to see a wizard rock show, and we made it back for Annika's and my 8 A.M. classes the next morning. The dance concert, New Beginnings, was in March, and it was a really fantastic show. I was very pleased with how my piece turned out, and I had a wonderful time working with my dancers. April brought Diva Night and the annual Theatre Department banquet, and the decision that I want to pursue Spanish translation in grad school.

But I just don't want it all to be over.

Sblogging and star words

I'm sitting on the couch in the family room, and my sister is sitting next to me. She's just started a blog as a project for herself in 2011, and she's typing a post right now too. She just decided we're "sblogging," or synchronized blogging.

So...it's 2011. It seriously feels like 2010 just whizzed by, and I don't know what to think about this new year. I have to graduate college in May, which is a terrifying prospect. In July I'm going to LeakyCon 2011, which I can tell you right now is going to be the highlight of the year, but I still need to find myself at least $400 more before I go. I guess everything will work out somehow...It always does.

I'm sure everyone has their own start-of-the-year traditions. We have a tradition at my church that my pastor started about six years ago called "star words." On the Sunday closest to Epiphany, we pass baskets of paper stars through the congregation. Each person takes the star on top of the pile and turns it over to see which word is written on the other side. They take that star home and hang it somewhere they'll see it, like on the fridge or the bathroom mirror, and that word becomes the basis for their journey with God for the year. The results are always astounding...every single year, I find that God puts my word in my life over and over and over again.

My word for 2010 was "Gratitude." I try to always be grateful for the many blessings in my life, but this past year I really did feel gratitude so much more than usual. At the beginning of the year I was still adjusting to life after Ecuador, and I was grateful to be home with my friends and family whom I'd missed so much, but as I shared my stories of the trip with people who didn't quite understand or appreciate them, I was so grateful for the experiences I had in Ecuador -- experiences that most people never get to have. I went to my first hp-ohio Crystal Ball, which I will never forget, mostly because of all the friends I made there. As I ran into a few rough spots with friends at school, I was so grateful for my friends from home who have always been there for me, any time of the day or night. When summer rolled around, I was grateful to have a job and be earning money in this difficult economy, even if I didn't particularly enjoy my job. I was so grateful for the love and fellowship of my church family at Montreat, and of my real family at our fabulous reunion in July. School started and I met my friend Annika, whom I feel like I've known for years already! I was grateful for my summer job again when I took my sister to Wrockstock 4 as an early birthday present, and I was so glad to be able to watch her revel in her first con experience, to meet some awesome musicians, to make lots of new friends, and to spend time with old friends. By the end of the semester, I was extremely grateful just to have survived and passed all my classes, let alone with good grades. All year long, I felt so much gratitude to all the members and staff of the Harry Potter Alliance, the Harry Potter community at large, John and Hank Green and the Nerdfighters, and all the other awesome YouTubers who are committed to decreasing worldsuck. Together we raised $123,000 for relief efforts in Haiti, worked together to win the HPA $250,000 for future programs in the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook, comforted each other as we mourned the loss of Esther Earl and vowed to never let her star go out, and raised over $135,000 for various charities and took over YouTube with the Project for Awesome!

2010 was an insanely awesome year, and I'm so grateful for everything that happened. My star word for 2011 is.......drum roll, please........"Strength." I have to admit, my immediate reaction was "Oh, great!" So I'm likely going to be needing a lot of prayer this year, but I know God will give me the strength to make it through whatever comes my way. *sigh*

Best wishes to all as we start the new year. What are you looking forward to in 2011?

Wrockstock 2010: An Abridged Chronicle of Awesome

There are so many things to say about my first Wrockstock experience (a wizard rock music festival, for those who don't know) that I could probably write for about twelve hours before covering them all, but alas, the Muggle world makes other demands of my time. Therefore, I now present a condensed list of awesome events that took place in Potosi, Missouri, last weekend.

*I had just gotten my suitcase off the Knight Bus when I offhandedly said to my sister, "Hm, I wonder if my HP-Ohio friends are already here." I walked around the bus, and there were Jenny, Philip, Kim, and Megan, unloading their car. I couldn't have found them sooner if I'd used a Summoning Charm! We all ate dinner together, along with Vago and some other HP-OH people, and we had a blast! We were off in a rather dark corner of the dining room, so Philip suggested we get candelabras, and then someone added fine linens, and then we decided we were the Slug Club! :)

*The Parselmouths, the first band of the weekend, decided to have a slumber party at their show! They wore footie pajamas, taught us all a song they learned this summer at Pureblood Camp ("I am the Heir of Slytherin, you all bow down to me..."), and finished things off with a mass pillow fight.

*The Remus Lupins' entire set was amazing! Extra-fantastic highlights included what Alex said was the first live playing of "Young Sirius Black's Flying Motorcycle" (though there's some debate in the comments of my video of it on YouTube about whether or not it was actually the first time), the EPIC cover of The Whomping Willows' "Draco and Harry," and the onstage dance party during "Looking for Trouble," which featured Boba Fett and a stuffed animal pug that was apparently much loved by Luke Conard.

*During Madam Pince and the Librarians' set in the Wampum Willow, Ariel used the word "antiquarian" in a rap about good grammar. This is an example of why wizard rock pwns all other music.

*I had won a backstage pass, but there was a little mix-up and I didn't get it at registration on Friday, so Abby told me to come find her before Saturday's afternoon show. I wandered over to the Room of Wrockquirement around 1:00, where Josh and Joe of Marked As His Equal directed me to Abby's cabin. Jarrod Perkins was sitting on the porch of his cabin across the way, and when Abby asked if I was under or over 21, I said I am 21, and Jarrod started yelling, "No she's not, she's 19!!" In hindsight, I should have retorted with something about Fred and George being unable to fool the Age Line in GoF. Oh well. After a little more teasing, Jarrod came out and gave me a hug. :)

*I went back to the Room of Wrockquirement to watch the sound checks, and I met Laramie and Emily, the other lovely ladies who had won backstage passes. Marked As His Equal did their check last, because they were playing first, and when they were finished Mark and Mandy started having a debate about what Mandy ought to wear for the show. Mark looked at Laramie, Emily, and me and said, "Will you guys please come help my wife figure out what to wear?" So we went behind the stage and Mandy showed us her options and we helped her make a decision. We hung out and just talked with the band until the show started, which was really fun because they are hilarious! Josh was, like, shaking with nerves and excitement! They also give fantastic hugs.

*RiddleTM always amazes me with their versatility! Their songs are so beautiful and so deep, and I bawled my eyes out during "For Jo." (I wasn't alone in that!) Then the crowd began shouting "Beans! Beans! Beans!" and they came back out onstage to play it as an encore. Georgia said we made her life by all chanting that together.

*After the evening sound check and before they opened the RoW doors, it was really cold in there! Emily, Laramie, Georgia, Victoria, a WS staff member named Sarah, and I all wound up standing in a circle and doing jumping jacks to keep warm!

*The Saturday night sets were incredible! MC Kreacher was amazing, there was so much energy in the room when MoM came out with "Snape vs. Snape" that I thought the room might explode from the pressure of the awesome, and Diagon Alley's "Ode to Jarrod"....enough said.

*Bryce Cone of Neville's Diary on alto sax - HOLY COW. He's a wizard rocker and a high school band director. That's almost too much cool to be allowed in one person.

*Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls, whose music I absolutely love, were playing their last set. When Christian sang "End of an Era" and the other musicians took off their instruments and left the stage, I was so close to crying again. Also, that set was kind of the epitome of what I love about the wrock community and the way they support and collaborate with each other. At one point I think there were six bands represented on the stage - seven if you count Alex playing Steph's guitar.

*I ran into Mandy and Mark again in the merch room and happened to mention that I didn't want to read Henry V on the plane the next day. Mandy proceeded to summarize the entire play in about 15 seconds and then gave me two free buttons because I was a backstage pass winner. :)

*Brian Malfoy started singing "Your Family Is Poor" with the obvious intention of "provoking" Jarrod. Jarrod stood at the side of the stage, making threatening and obscene gestures, until he'd "had enough" and invaded the stage. They stood at the same mic, screaming their own versions of the song into each other's faces. And then...

*...MATT MAGGIACOMO, LAUREN FAIRWEATHER, AND JFF SHOWED UP!!!!! Biggest surprise ever!! I'm not sure I'd ever heard so much screaming in one place before. The coolest part was being able to see the reactions of the other wrockers at the edges of the stage and all the laughing and hugging that took place.

*Jarrod's entire set was insane, from his dramatic entrance to him periodically splashing the crowd with water to "Brotherly Love," one of the dirtiest and most fabulous songs in all of wrock!!

*Tonks and the Aurors. Holy cow! Steph worked so hard the entire weekend to keep everything running smoothly, and I couldn't think of anyone more deserving of the final set. She wrocked so hard that she broke strings on two different guitars, and Remus Lupin held his character hilariously as he helped his "wife" switch her guitar strap, which was being difficult. "We Are Magic" was truly magical, and then we called Steph and the others back for two encores, and they had only practiced one but you never would have known it.

*When they finally turned the lights off to signify that there would be no more encores, everyone turned to their friends and started hugging, beginning the process of farewells, and then suddenly all of the wrockers ran onto the stage, jumping up and down and singing "The Weapon" at the top of their lungs. We all joined in, jumping, dancing, singing, shouting, hugging, some people crying, and it was the perfect culmination of a truly amazing weekend.

*I managed to catch Alex after the show and I got to tell him how much his music means to me, which is seriously a lot, especially after it helped me survive some pretty heavy homesickness when I was studying in Ecuador last fall. I asked if I could hug him, and he said sure, but he made me put down the stuff I was carrying so we could do it properly. Then we gave each other an enormous hug. :D

*In the morning we had a pretty small, sleepy group on the 8 AM Knight Bus back to the airport. We were reliving some of our favorite moments of Wrockstock on the shuttle bus to the east terminal, and a guy on the bus said we sounded as if we were talking in code! We laughed and explained a bit about wizard rock. On the way through security, a TSA guy stopped and asked me what nargles are (I was wearing my "I believe in nargles" shirt), and he laughed when I told him and said he at least knew who Dobby was. Before we went our separate ways to the flight gates, our little Knight Bus crew shared a big group hug in the middle of the airport. :)

Wrockstockers, thank you! You amaze me and I hope we can all do this over again next year! The weapon we have is, indeed, love. <3

Triple Rainbow Awesome!!!!!11!!!1

It's Friday afternoon, so it must be time for Madeline to write a blog post. I'm not going home this weekend (for once, it seems), so I actually have a big chunk of time to do things.

School continues to just be school: fairly interesting and super stressful. I'm now working on my second Collaborative project. This one has been more interesting to think about than the previous one, even though I don't really like the play, because it's a comedy so it has more dimension than a farce. The play is The House of Blue Leaves, and it's about a bunch of people who think their lives are completely falling apart and they're all pursuing these really unrealistic fantasies: "If only [such and such] would happen, my life would be perfect!" My team has decided to use reality TV for our concept, because of course reality shows (at least in the Real World/Survivor/Big Brother sense) are completely unrealistic, and I think a lot of people watch them to feel better about their own lives. It's a schadenfreude thing, almost. Because of our concept, we have to move the time period of the show from 1965 to 1995, so it's been kind of fun updating the dialogue. For example, any reference to Jackie Kennedy is changed to Madonna, and one character's "transistors" are now hearing aids. I'm doing scenic design for this show, which is definitely not my forte, but at least I'll have costume design for the final show of the semester. I'm going to try to incorporate reality TV into the set design by having boom mics and TV cameras visible in the scene.

Have you ever been in a library with only one other person? It's awesome! (Sorry for the random topic change.) I was in the library from 11:30 to midnight last night with my friend Annika, doing Collaborative research (we're in the same group this time), and no one else was in there!! So we got to talk to each other from across the room and be really goofy and it was so much fun! It felt like we were being really rebellious or something.

The reason we were in the library so late was that last night Annika and I drove to Cuyahoga Falls, about 45 minutes away, to see the Triple Rainbow Awesome Tour!!! 3RA, as it's been dubbed on Twitter, was the fall tour for ALL CAPS, Alex Carpenter, Skyway Flyer, and Mike Lombardo, all of whom (except maybe Alex?) are DFTBA Records artists. Annika and I hung around at the end of the concert and waited for all the high schoolers and their parents to leave, and then we got to really talk to everyone!! While we were waiting, we met another girl who goes to B-W! Her name is Jessica, she lives in the dorm across the street from mine, and she knows another Nerdfighter on campus, so now there are at least four of us!! I got the chance to ask Alex and Kristina if I could use a couple of their wizard rock songs in a school project, and Alex convinced Annika to get a Twitter account. I bought a poster, which everyone signed, and everyone also signed Annika's DFTBA shirt. We also got to watch Hayley, Mike's girlfriend, film her entire 5 Awesome Girls video, and then Annika asked Mike about learning to play one of his songs, and Hayley and Mike took us upstairs to use the piano in the sanctuary to show Annika the chords! (The show was in the cafe at Hayley's church.) It was really a completely fantastic night, and definitely the most fun I've had since the HP-Ohio Crystal Ball in January.

I recorded the last part of "Don't Unplug Me" by ALL CAPS, so I'll put that below. Now I'm going to go back to rocking out to my new Skyway Flyer album and wondering why there are two pairs of sunglasses on my desk and to whom the extraneous pair belongs. My life is unpredictable, if nothing else...