I'm baaaaaaaaaack

Sorry, reader (I'm not going to be rash and assume there are more than one of you :-D), for my lack of content over the past few days. I was in Bethel with four high school students for the high school speech contest. SOOOOOOOO much better than junior high. I basically just had to sit there and watch them do their speech thing. Of the four who went, two took second place and one took first! The other just barely missed making the finals, which (unofficially) puts her at sixth place (top five got to go to finals). The good news is, first and second place finishers get to go to ANCHORAGE for the state competition! I'm going to try to make it to at least one of the two as a chaperone. We'll see.

Anyway, that was the past few days in a nutshell. Sleeping on the floor of a high school for two nights... eating too much pizza and trying to resist my students' attempts to get me to dance with them at the dance they threw for the speech participants... and generally having a good time. We returned home elated, thinking that, like in previous years (the students told me), the WHOLE SCHOOL would be waiting for us in the lobby to welcome them home and congratulate those who placed. Instead, our principal met us at the airstrip and gave us the bad news... A local man died in a boating accident. He was: husband to one of our clasroom aides (one of my two favorite aides), father to another classroom aide (the other of my two favorite aides), father and grandfather and uncle to a whole slew of our students (their youngest is in high school and they had lots of kids, very spread out, so some of their grandchildren are in elementary school). The whole school is quiet and sad today. I saw one of my second graders crying and it really broke my heart.

I'm looking forward to sleeping in my bed tonight. I'm physically and mentally drained, and I bet by the end of the school day I'll be emotionally drained as well.