this post shows just how much of a dork I really am.

I don't have work tomorrow or the next day, so right now I'm gonna stay up late and download the movie camp rock to watch cause I still haven't seen it from this summer.

update.

sorry I've been slack with this thing lately. I've just had a lot going on lately. my grandma is in the hospital, so that's been kinda not that great... but she's doing better now. it's hard being up here when something like that happens.

my internship is going great now, and i love it!!

me and my roommate have been going out a lot and doing fun random things. here are some pictures from the san gennaro festival we went to in little italy:

me and a chili pepper plant

the church

alicia and the italian sausages we were brave enough to eat!

statue at the church

the festival!

me and alicia are supposed to be doing something super awesome right now... but she's stuck out in the common area talking with the directors, so she may be a while... so for now, I blog!

today one of my students taught me how to beat box... ha, well... he "tried" to!!

counseling, wings, and bad music.

I sat through more PD again today... ha, of course it was awful. I loathe PD. (what else is new!)

however good news!! I met with a student today! naturally of course I can't talk about what we talked about on here due to client-counselor confidentiality issues... ha, he actually was really non-talkative anyway... but yay, it was awesome to interact with one! I feel like students at my school are rare little alien creatures you never see around...

so me and the roomie decided the other night that we need to get out more during the week to help uplift our spirits. this evening we went out for wings at dukes, watched a little baseball, then decided to go to this place called zebulon in brooklyn to see some bands play. the location and venue was super awesome, however the music from the first band seriously hurt our ears it was so horrid. it was like some sort of experimental "lets bang on pots and pans" type of indie circus noise. the last band, "motel motel" sounds pretty ill on myspace, and I wanted to see them, but I seriously didn't feel like waiting around all night listening to bad music before I could hear them... so we left! and back to manhattan we came! I really wished I lived in brooklyn... the area is so much cooler and so much more "homey" than the part of manhattan I live in.

more PD tomorrow, so don't expect an exciting update...

internship.

ok, so my internship was a lot better today. I was VERY pro-active. (as mike--my co-worker/the teaching specialist at the school would say) I talked to some students in the hallway and during the fire drill (woo-hoo, exciting!), made a bulletin board, lead a teacher training, put files in boxes, collaborated/consulted with a few teachers, and started making plans for the semester... b/c I'm now the new counselor for all incoming 9th and 11th grade students! yay! I'm excited about that... now only if they'll hurry up and get here!

I can't wait for taylor swifts new album to be released.

hello readers! (and allison who I KNOW will be happy that I finally am making an update!! :) I am having quite the lazy sunday and am waiting on my laundry right now, so I thought I'd take the time to blog!!

lately I've been busy, but have also felt like I've been in some sort of a rut. my internship has been beyond horrid for many reasons, mainly though b/c there have been no kids there and I have felt useless/unwanted there, especially around my direct supervisor... which has bummed me out quite a bit.

however, fear not... it's changing! after some insight provided from one of my co-workers, and a conversation with the AP, the structure of things is going to change, and I feel better about it. now however, I must completely be pro-active and find things for myself to do, which is going to be hard at first due to 1) there are not really many kids there and 2)I'm still a bit unsure about how the school runs. despite it being hard at first, I think I am going to learn a lot from the experience. I have a lot of great ideas, and things I want to do... however I don't know if they'll work yet or not b/c I haven't been able to quite feel out what the student population is like, or what it is they need the most. the AP and other staff members seem really supportive so far, so I'm at least greatful for that. wish me luck for next week!

after the week was over, me, alicia, and laura went to brooklyn. I really like brooklyn! we were in an area called williamsburg, which is overly trendy and up and coming... oh, and totally overpopulated with hipsters! even so, it was a nice change from manhattan. it was a nice break from the city for a while. to give yall a better idea of what the two areas are like, I'm going to compare them by using the typical guy pickup line you'd hear from each area:

manhattan guy (wearing a suit, has overly gelled back hair): "hello! I'm a stockbroker, want to go out with me on my boat in connecticut for the weekend?" [guy then hands a plain white business card to you with a fax number, cell number, phone number, and email address on it]

brooklyn guy (wearing a vest, skinny jeans, and hat... hasn't had a haircut in months): "hello! I'm a freelance artist! I own a gallery! want to come by sometime? [guy then hands a business card to you made out of some wood grain, colorful writing, and myspace address on it]

it's funny to me how up here how segregated the different communities in the area really are. it seems like brooklyn guy and manhattan guy would never be caught hanging out in the same place. it is more diverse up here, however the diversity is spread out into little patches all around, if that makes sense.

on saturday I was going to go to little italy for the San Gennaro Festival that the loft directors wife told me about. it's some sort of religious feast of sorts, so I was pretty much just going to little italy to eat lots of food. I didn't have any other plans that day so just decided that I would take my time, stroll around, and walk there. bad idea! I ended up getting lost somehow on the outskirts of chinatown in some sketch neighborhoods. one of them ended up being some sort of kitchen equipment district. here is a weird picture I took while being there:


usually I'm awesome with directions and finding my way around here, but I ended up really far south where the streets and avenues stopped having numbers, so I got really turned around and confused. after wandering the streets for hours, I finally found an area I recognized, and made my way back alright.

ok, I think that is all I feel like typing for now! have a good evening everyone!!

it's about the strength of your heart.

so I started running yesterday. there's this park that goes along side the river, so that's were I went. it's sooooooooooo pretty at night, and so cool to run along next to it with the all buildings lining the skyline of the waterway. maybe not the safest idea to run at night (sorry mom and dad!) but again, it's pretty out.

I also ran today! this time lance armstrong was my personal trainer, so I almost died. I downloaded this lance armstrong running mix thing from itunes... it plays all these song segments, and at certain intervals lance either tells you to run faster, or encourages you with some line like "it's not about the strength of your legs, it's about the strength of your heart... so keep running!" lance is a pretty hardcore athlete, and I had a hard time keeping up, so maybe I should download a different one, until I can work my way up to lance armstrong speed... I was thinking something more along the lines of richard simmons.

today we gained two more students at our school and I got to do my first intake!! yay!

the weekend.

so this weekend me and alicia did the whole crazy “going out in new york” thing.

we’re lucky to still be alive.

however it was a lot of fun and we made a lot friends in the process… bryan who has the thickets glasses and thickest irish accent ever, dan the trumpet player and the rest of his ska band, amad the egyptian falafel maker, a stalker who alicia beat up, lots of guys with gelled hair that I hope to never see again, reefer the homeless man who’s not homeless, rob and lee, “paolo is awesome”, and gill.

here is a picture me and alicia discovered at the local mcdonalds this weekend. it's cool to be artsy up here, so this place had ridiculous artwork like this:

ohhh, and I forgot to update yall about my internship!! we had a student come on Friday and I got to learn how to do an “intake” with him! I was ridiculously excited about it b/c I was starting to think I’d never see any kids. It was also my last day of PD, which I was soooo thankful for.

and last but not least, I discovered a new favorite store of mine… anthropologie! not for the clothes, but for the housing stuff! I spent over an hour in there looking at cool things. I was soooooooooo close to buying these really cool sparrow door knob things for dresser drawers, but then I realized 1) I don’t have a dresser here and 2) I don’t even own one at home that needs new knobs… so I made a wise decision and used self-control by not purchasing the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

watching water boil.

so I'm sitting here in the kitchen waiting for this super lame pot of pasta to boil (see above)... it's taking so long that I decided I'd take a picture of it, then blog about it and other things that have been going on recently.

it's been almost a month since I've moved here and I'm FINALLY starting to like it better. I mean, it was cool and all at first, but then it was just hard to transition and get used to it. regardless, today it felt more like my home.

I went to my internship and worked today. more BORING PD, blah blah blah. while the presenter was blabbing on about stuff that hurt my head too much to listen to, I did a lot of thinking. I realized that this is only the 2nd year of existance for the alternative school that I'm at, so I thought about that some. The PD we were doing is about this thing called Advisory that I won't bore you with, and since our type of suspension school is so new, the consultation group has no clue how to implement it at our sites, so pretty much what we're doing is creating our own programs out of thin air. I LOVE the idea of that though... cause I'm not really the kind of person who likes cookie-cutter ideas that are sold to you, and have been around for years and years, just cause that's the way things have always been. there still aren't any kids at our school yet, but we're supposed to get 3 of them tomorrow... who knows if they'll show though.

one of my co-workers is teaching a class on hip hop and how it relates to changes in our society and culture. today he showed me his syllabus, and told me alllllllllll about it. it was actually really interesting, so I think I'm gonna go out and buy a book about it since I'm not a student and can't take his class.

let's see... what else is going on. me and my roomie (alica the new intern... who will now be referred to as my roomie, instead of the new intern) went running today at the park by the river. well, you guys all know I really walked... but anyway, a guy tried to say hello to me as I was walking, but in the process he tripped over his own two feet and then ran away as fast as he could. I guess he was just really embarrassed... to me though it was HILARIOUS.

my stupid pasta is STILL not boiling. how lame.

ohhhh, the roomie introduced me to a new band that I'm loving right now called "she and him." if ya got myspace, go listen to them NOW. http://www.myspace.com/sheandhim

she likes good music, so we're gonna go to lots of good shows up here!! yay! old crow medicine show is playing twice, so we're def. gonna make it out to one of those and potentially tons more we looked up the other night.

ok, so my food is starting to cook, I think I'm gonna go check on it now...

my fort.

I had to sit though more PD (it stands for "professional development"... new yorkers are all about abbreviating everything so I've learned) today. again, it was quite ridiculous and overwhelmingly boring, so I won't talk about it. the worst part is that I have to sit through it ALL week.

we had one student show up for the first day of school. it was really exciting, at least for me... because I was beginning to doubt that any students would ever show up. I've been a bit concerned lately about not meeting my direct internship hour requirements for my class (due to the fact that there are no students to work with) but my supervisor assured me today that they'll all get suspended from their home-school sites this week, and we'll have never-ending amounts of work to do soon enough.

in other news, me and alicia worked on our forts today! (aka, our bunkbeds--as interns, we're allowed to hang out fabric to create make-shift rooms for privacy if we don't want to see the guests all of the time.) she built hers, and I made some additions to mine, including a door section that now slides.

here is a picture of my "room"--in the picture, the "door" is open, but it can slide all the way across for complete coverage. one thing you can't see in the picture is the little pockets on the backside of the curtain that faces in towards the bedroom. the pockets are convenient little storage places for things like earplugs (when annoying guests are snoring) flashlights, my phone, etc. also notice the lovely windowseal that i call my own (even though technically I'm not supposed to) on it sits a even more lovely lithograph picture of the jonas brothers, which I inherited from a guest who left it here. :)--