I just reached a summit. I am now (well, actually, tomorrow I will be) a college graduate. With a useable degree, unlike the music performance one I graduated with last spring. And I am completely finished with my undergraduate work. I feel kind of weird -- now I have to get a full-time job. My childhood is completely over. Can you tell I'm trying to psych myself into the adult world? ;-D

The last couple of weeks have been very full. The week before this was my last at Zuni Christian. I got to substitute teach on Monday morning, which was very fun. The whole week kids kept reminding me that I was leaving on Thursday, and I kept telling them not to remind me because it made me sad. Thursday we had a big party in our classroom. We had a spaghetti lunch, a "graduation" ceremony complete with a processional, a mortar board (made of cardboard with a crepe paper tassel), and three official handshakes. Kathy had the kids write a book for me. It is full of things to remember about them, about the town of Zuni, and advice for me as a teacher. I got to read it to them, which was very fun. And I am happy to say I did not cry, although I was tempted to a couple of times!

That night I finished my portfolio, the collection of my work as a student teacher that is used to show Dordt College and the State of Iowa that I am competent in every area a teacher needs to be. I finished at 2:00 a.m. Then I packed until 4:00 a.m. Then I took a nap before waking up at 6:30 a.m. That's probably the closest to an all-nighter that I ever pulled during college. But I contented myself with the fact that I could sleep on the bus, and that it was the last time I'd have to stay up late finishing college work. :-)

I got a ride to the bus station early Friday morning. The bus was going to be late, but I was so tired I didn't care very much. After a nap in the waiting room, a nap on the bus, and one more nap a bit later, I was alert for the rest of the day. This was a much less eventful bus trip than the last. I sat next to a very nice girl with a soft Oklahoma accent, on her way to California for on-the-job training to be a tatoo artist. She was nervous about moving and so was I, so we had plenty to talk about. Neither of us had seen the Arizona landscape before either, so we exclaimed over flatness, mountains, and cacti. When we saw the forests of saguaro cacti we took a collective gasp that drew some amused looks from other passengers.

I disembarked in Phoenix and walked into the bus station to see the smiling faces of Catherine and Lynola. That was the beginning of a fun weekend. The highlights: going to the zoo, shopping for (and finding -- that's the amazing part!!) nice clothes for my interview, climbing Squaw Peak on Sunday afternoon (that is where the picture and my sore legs are from), meeting Lynola's small but energetic class of kindergarteners, and The Car Incident. Let me explain that last one a bit further. We left from Lynola's school to drop Catherine at the airport so she could fly home to her hubby. About halfway there Lynola mentioned a funny smell. We were in the city, and funny smells abound, so Catherine and I disregarded this. Then we saw a thin curl of smoke drifting up from the steering column. That seemed to be a graver problem. So we pulled over, turned off the car, and Lynola called her dad while Catherine called hers. Cell phones and dads are a great combination. Unfortunately I did not have my cell phone so I waited till the next morning to get my own dad's advice about the Incident. All of our dads (and the mechanic, too) agreed that it was an electrical problem and should be fixed but probably wouldn't cause an immediate explosion. Anyways, we ended up calling somebody else to take Catherine to the airport, and Lynola and I prayed hard as we drove the car a couple of blocks to the nearest garage. The mechanics couldn't find anything wrong so we just got an oil change and prayed home. And prayed to the airport the next morning. :-) God was good -- no more smoke.

Flying with the Christmas crowd was fun. There were lots of babies and families. I read a book and actually completed a word puzzle in the airplane magazine. It was significantly easier than a crossword, which is why I completed it, but still I felt a deep sense of significant accomplishment. I disembarked the plane to see the smiling faces of my aunt and grandma. Went home, ate dinner, caught up a bit with my big sister, then woke up at an unearthly hour (okay, only 6:00) to make sure we navigated rush hour traffic in time to get to my interview promptly.

The interview went pretty well. I realized how much I have left to learn -- I am badly in need of some experience and perhaps a bit of specialization -- but I was quite impressed with the small private school for children with learning disabilities. They seem to do a very good job of teaching the kids and helping them to succeed. And the opening they have is for a co-teaching 2nd grade position in a classroom of ten little boys. What fun! There are only two potential problems that I can see. First, Washington D.C. is not exactly the place I envisioned myself ending up. But that's okay because God has way better plans than I do -- He's proved that over and over. Second, the co-teacher that I would be working with does not seem to have the knd of personality that would make me feel very comfortable to work with. There seemed to be a bit of condescension and impatience from him that could cause stress on the job. But I could be quite wrong, because first impressions are not always accurate. The school is interviewing a few more people, so I probably won't find out if I get the job for a few weeks yet.

Other than that, my job search has turned up some teacher's aide positions and some other openings, but nobody else has scheduled an interview. It doesn't exactly help that I am bouncing around between four states and two ends of the country during this two-week period. At least I have a cell phone whose number remains the same.

My family is flying out to meet my aunt, grandma, sister, and I on Christmas Eve. We'll have Christmas here in the D.C. area, then go to Ohio for New Year's with my other grandparents. Then I will have to figure out where to go next -- Iowa to fetch the rest of my stuff, back here for a job, or somewhere else that is not yet foreseen. From the top of a mountain you can see very far, but not with the kind of precision that tells you where your house is. So I know that I intend to head off the mountain into some kind of a job, but still don't know where or what that will be. Good thing God's eyes are better than mine and He knows exactly where I should end up. Thanks, Heavenly Father!

And Happy Birthday Jesus. Hope you each have a blessed, relaxing, joyful celebration of Christmas and New Year.