Dinner

Today I had my first day of teaching CCD (aka religious ed) to 4th/5th graders. The lady who originally was going to teach them is moving to Indianapolis but she is teaching for the first few weeks. I'm glad that she is there to start the lessons and such. It's similar to student teaching where you kind of observe and participate a little before being given complete responsibility...thank goodness as I don't know how I would fare without the bit of modelling. It is definitely going to be a learning experience for me not only because I am not used to actually teaching this age group (we mostly play at Rec during the summer) but because my scriptural/Biblical baackground is not very extensive. Good thing I learned so much at Oneonta...especially from the many questions Steve so graciously and patiently answered...yay for open forums! It will also be a little more work than I had anticipated in order to make it fun, interesting, and applicable for the students. Maybe Shannon and I can collaborate on ideas for the different lessons. Plus the lady who is leaving has already written out some lesson ideas and such that should help me get a jump start on expanding the stuff that the students can do in the booklets they'll be getting. I certainly don't want them to have to work out of the book for an hour every Sunday...how dull.

This afternoon basically consisted of me buying a few groceries and baking an apple pie. I had said that I would bring the pie to Christy's where we went for dinner. I've made an apple pie a couple times before when I was in Germany. Brilliant me forgot to buy a peeler and a rolling pin at the store and couldn't find anything smaller than probably a 5 pound box of lard, which I needed for the pie crust (I substituted shortening). Needless to say, it was a little more work to make the pie than I had anticipated but I didn't mind as it is rewarding work...manual labor tends to be more enticing when you have a lot of intellectual stuff going on. I even made a little apple with a leaf out of the extra dough and put it on top. However, unlike my grandpa, I did not mix food coloring in with the dough so my hands are not colorful. My apartmentmate does have some food coloring though, so I mixed a tad with water and flour and sort of painted it on with my finger. It ended looking pretty good when it was baked.

After Church, I met the rest of the crew (Andy, Molly, Christy who have the same advisor and a workstation where I do and Clint, who is Christy's neighbor and in our GIS class) at Christy's for some pizza...with homemade dough...mmm. We socialized and ate and then played the game Apples to Apples. We were just laughing most of the game we had so much fun. I'm sure that there will be pleny of comments to come relating to that game. Some words will just never be the same...lol. While playing, we had some of the pie topped with vanilla ice cream. It tasted really good and I got some great compliments on it. Since I told Jen (apartmentmate) that I would bring her a piece back if there were leftovers, I'll make sure she gets a piece and then the rest is going in the lab, which Andy is thrilled with. It's nice to be able to make things and then have a place to bring the leftovers where they will be eaten and appreciated...and not by me. My body is happier about that...save for my taste buds of course.