hmmm. it's been a long long time since I made my way to this slice of the internet. i'll see if i can catch you up on the goings-on in Matt World.
I finished student teaching and graduated! I finished out my time at Mather High School, which was a lot of fun. I went to their Ethnic Fest and saw all the different cultural groups do some sort of routine, and ate a lot of food. It was pretty awesome. I also dragged Joe, Alina and Jen to the first full length play that Mather has done. It was Scenes from West Side STory. THe students did a really good job, but the parents were rather irritating and talked most of the evening. Graduation went well. Grandma H came down and Helen came up and we wandered around UIC and sat through a mediocre speech by someone I already don't remember.
I got a job for the summer! I worked full time at Fry's Electronics in Downers Grove for 3 months. It went pretty well. I liked working up front at the registers. The people were mostly decent, if only in their early 20s. Then they transferred me to the Telecom Sales department which made me stay later in the evenings, but I no longer had to pretend I didn't understand how to use a plunger when someone told me to go clean a bathroom. Now I just had to fetch crap for people from the back and explain how phones work. I was planning on staying with this job right up until school started, but some dumb girl from my department went and complained to the assistant store manager that I was taking time off for vacation, so the day before I left I get this lecture about how I haven't built up enough vacation time, so if I miss more than three days of work in a week I have to reapply. I never want to work in a place with such crappy employee relations as that store again.
I ushered Glen and Jen's wedding! In July, Jen and Glen got themselves hitched! Sid, Krajniak, some other dude, and I were the ushers who moved people around. We failed rather miserably at separating people as they were supposed to be seated, but it all worked out pretty well. I attempted to post Glen doing the Tunak Tunak dance to YouTube but the conversion pretty much darkened it too much. You can still go find it if you want to....
I went to Hawai'i! Grandma H takes everyone for a trip for HS graduation. WHhen James and I graduated we went to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone Nat'l Parks. Micki and Sean were graduating this year, so Gram decided to take them and everybody else to Hawaii for a week. We went with a tour group that went to O'ahu and Maui, but had lots of free time. On O'ahu, we went to Pearl Harbor, the Polynesian Cultural Center, took surfing lessons, ate a ton of rice and pineapple related dishes, and stood in front of the Waikiki Beach Live Webcam to wave to people. On Maui, we went to Haleakala Volcano, drove the Road to Hana, went ziplining, snorkeling off of Molokini, and ate lots of rice and pineapple dishes. Every day in Hawaii, I ate rice at 2/3 meals, and swam in the Pacific, which were my two goals. We also rented a Jeep to drive to Hana which was awesome. Pictures will be posted to my website when I get a new computer...
I got a real job! I am now officially a German teacher in the Plainfield school district. I split my time half between Plainfield South HS and Plainfield HS Central Campus. I teach two sections of German 1 at both schools, which means that I have to deal with Freshmen all day long, BUT it means that I have a full time job with only one prep, which is pretty nice for a first year gig. It lets me put more effort towards making German 1 work well. I have been trying to get to German club meetings at both schools in addition to my other meetings that I have all the damn time. :) At both schools I have one class that just sits there and does whatever I tell them to do, is mostly interested in learning German but doesn't really care about it all that much, and one class where there are a lot of people who are constantly asking me to translate random words and at the same time are really interested in what we are learning but whenever I give them an inch they are all talking loudly and yelling to friends across the room and getting into whatever they want to do and then I have to take time to bring them back together. It's interesting.
I got a fiancee! Helen and I are now officially engaged, as opposed to the last several years when we were only jokingly unofficially engaged. :) We had a low key engagement that fit our personalities pretty well. She has made me little hand drawn books throughout our relationship and I made her one this time. We made dinner and then walked to the Tastee Freeze for twists. We're looking at next summer, and possibly at the U of I Union Ballroom. Helen is starting her Masters in Urban Planning at UIC and is suddenly remembering why graduation felt so good last time.
I skated another Inline Marathon! This year, Joe and I were accompanied by Alina and Helen, not only to Duluth, but this time in the race itself! Helen and I practiced by skating the lakefront path in Chicago every weekend which helped a lot. Joe just barely managed to break 2 hours, Alina skated a 2:10, and Helen and I were at 2:14. Joe improved his time by 11 minutes and I improved my time by 52 minutes. I dont know what the heck happened there! Joe missed all of our finishes because he wasn't expecting any of us so soon. He was standing at the finish line watching when Alina tapped him on the back and said "hi" and then as they were talking they heard the announcer say "Helen Miller of Urbana IL!" as she and I crossed the line. It was a really fun weekend, we didn't get rained on, and we ate a lot of delicious food. I wasn't able to get the day off, so we had to leave around 4ish from Joe and Alina's apartment, but it worked out well because I work right off of Rte 59 in Plainfield, and Joe and Alina live at Rte 59 and I-88 so it was a straight shot out of here to the great white North.
Today I have the day off, school was cancelled due to flooded roads all around Plainfield, so I should probably get back to work, but I felt like it was time to do some updating of a several months nature. We'll see if i get back into updating this or if it's another eight months before I find any time to update...
