Baby Rats For My Class

Cute Baby Rats

Today one of the parents brought my class a special surprise: two adorable baby rats and all the stuff to take care of them.

The Student Who Brought us The Rats

Last year I reluctantly took a rat from my sister, because she found out she was allergic after purchasing one. It was a big, mean, anti-social male. My kids really liked him, but I was always nervous that he would bite one of them (which he did at least twice). Thankfully this summer he got sick and died.
I wanted a new rat, because I had a cage, but I wasn't sure where to get one. I was thrilled when one of the dads told me his rats had just had a litter. These new rats are so cute and tiny. It is impossible to tell their gender yet and so we may have to send one back if they are not the same.

We are waiting to name them until we know their gender, but for now the kids are calling them Crossy (because it has a cross on its back) and Straighty (because it has a straight line on its back).

Crossy in my Hand (So Tiny)

Tattoo

At work today, I got a tattoo, of course its a henna tattoo,but its still pretty cool. Our International Club was having a fund raiser. Several of my students were getting one, and I knew I would need to supervise them, so I decided to get one to.

Two of my girls got Pegasus.
These two have Chinese symbols for love and peace.

I knew I wanted a Chinese symbol but I wasn't sure that any of the students there would be able to do what I wanted. So when I asked if anyone could do the symbol for Taiwan I was pleasantly surprised that several students volunteered. In the end a nice young man named Howard did it. He is actually from just outside of Taichung. It was a lot of fun.

I'm pretty sure that this says Taiwan, but it could say almost anything and I wouldn't know.

My Boring Life

In case any of you were wondering: I lead a pretty boring life. As a consequence of my boring life I rarely have anything to blog about. However, my sister in law Roxy and my brother Larry called me last week to let me know that I needed to update this thing. So, here I am updating my blog, it will be boring but it just might manage to be funny. I have recently started my second year of teaching at Eldorado/Emerson. I love the strange assortment of people I work with. At lunch a week or so ago, one of my co-workers, who knows that I am LDS, asked what Mormons think about heaven and hell, and specifically he wanted to know if he was going to hell. Yeah, that’s the kind of conversations we have in the staff room. At first I laughed and teased him about doing evil deeds, but then I got serious and told him about spirit prison, and the degrees of glory. It was a pretty neat discussion. :)

My students this year are super cute (yes, I know there was no segue here, deal with it). I only have 7 of them (just two boys) and they had my mom as a teacher last year so they are relatively well behaved and good at doing school work. This class is very different from my class last year, and the biggest difference is that they are very affectionate. They are regularly giving me hugs and trying to hold my hand and telling me that the think I'm a great teacher. Everyday of school is a real boost to my self confidence.

(Izzy and Mikayla hugging me, and Emily and Makayla mugging for the camera.)

There really isn't much to tell about my social life. The most exciting thing that has happened to me outside of work in a while is that I renewed my annual pass at Disneyland. I still haven't seen the new Halloween stuff, and I can't wait to see the fireworks and ghost themed Space Mountain. Maybe I'll blog about it when I finally go. Maybe.