A Day In the Life of Nicole!: March 2009

I had the opportunity this weekend to visit and get a tour of the school that I am going to be teaching at next year, which was SO exciting!

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been hired as a 7th grade math teacher at Rincon Vista Middle School (Home of the RoadRunners) in Vail, Arizona. The school is just being built now, and has been under construction all year.

I should be getting some pictures soon of the actual school (this is a picture of all of the teachers who I will be teaching with next year who also attended this tour) ~ here we are in the mostly completed gym. If you look at the top right corner of the picture, you can see a black covered rectangle. They’ve had to stop construction on the vents which will be going there because a few weeks ago, and owl actually built a nest and laid eggs in there! Pretty crazy.

Wow it has been awhile since I’ve written in here! Schoolwork + new job = busy Nicole!

Luckily, I was able to get away for 3 days of the Spring Break here to visit my parents in Palm Springs, California. It was about a 5 1/2 hour easy drive each way, and the hotel they were at was AMAZING!

Right when I pulled into the hotel though, my car started making a loud THUMPing noise, which turned out to be a flat tire! On the up side, thank GOODNESS it didn’t happen any earlier, as most of the drive was in the middle of NO WHERE, and I don’t know what I would have done!! We were able to get the hole in my flat fix, and the focus is back up and running again!

At the hotel (which was amazing, see the pictures below), there was a lot of water, both just decorative waterfalls and big lakes which the hotel had boats on. In the little waterfalls right outside of our hotel window, there was the CUTEST little duck family, EVER! These babies must have JUST been born, Mom and I couldn’t stop staring at them.. and trying to find them! They were also extremely friendly, and actually came right up to our feet and would peck them!

On my first night there, we went out to dinner at “Kobe’s,” a Japanese restaurant where they make the food right in front of you (similarly to Behi Hannas), which was delicious. I got steak and prawns, yummy, and Mom got Chicken – also delicious. We then spent the rest of Tuesday night in the hot tub, what a life!

The next morning, we got up and went to the Aerial Tramway, which was a big tramway which carried you up to the top of a mountain; complete with snow at the top! It was very scary, but also pretty awesome up at the top – the air smelled so clean and fresh. We ordered glasses of wine, and sat at a table overlooking the view.

After this adventure, we headed to the Yardhouse for some drinks and dinner (we actually ordered 5 different appetizers and split them), and went back to the hotel for some lazy time by the pool.