Transitions

So much has happened since I last wrote.  Here are a few high points!

• Ryan and I had an awesome vacation in St. Augustine, FL.  Don’t know if I mentioned it before, but the parents of one of my youth loaned us their condo on the beach for a week.  It was beautiful, and was one of the best vacations I have ever had.  It was the first time that we didn’t have to be on anyone’s schedule but our own, and it was great.  We swam, hung out on the beach, read, watched movies, did touristy stuff, ate seafood, and just relaxed for 6 days straight.  It was perfect!
• The day after I got back, my youth had a farewell cook-out for me.  It was really fun, and they gave me a 4 GB Ipod nano that they had collected money for.  It was so sweet, and now I have entered the world of the IPOD!
• I had a good last week at work.  Got everything ready for the next guy to take over, and got to spend some good time with the youth as well.  We had a pool party, went hiking, and painted some pictures on the walls of my office.  On my last day of work, a bunch of us went to get dinner together.  During dinner, one of the youth gave me a card with $700 in it that the parents had collected for me!  I was so shocked and touched that they thought to do that.  It was a really great surprise.

It’s really weird to not be working at the church anymore.  I miss the kids and everyone else a lot, and it is going to take awhile to get adjusted.  I finally started grad. school this week though, and I have to say that I really feel that I have made the right decision.  I am really enjoying the classes so far, and I really feel like school counseling is going to be a great fit for me.  The program that I am in is a really good one….the professors are awesome, and they have really built a solid framework for teaching.  Also, it is a CACREP accredited program, which will be really good for me once I start looking for a job.

I’m also meeting some great people, and I hope that I will get to be good friends with at least a few of them.  Of course there is the comraderie that comes with having almost all of your classes together (the school uses a cohort system), but I hope that I will actually make a couple of good girlfriends in the process. =)

Anyway, my life pretty much consists of reading articles and textbooks these days, so I’d better stop procrastinating and get back to it!