T minus 15 days

15 days and I'm going to Rwanda! CRAZYNESS!!

So this past week as just flown by.

Good News: On Friday I found out my teaching placement for the next year! I'm going to be teaching at an all girl's boarding school, and I have been requested to teach chemistry (of course that could change once in country..). Wohoo! Now when I first looked into this year program in Rwanda I was excited that it was for teaching math and science, but I was still unsure what exact subject I would be teaching; so finding out that I will get to teach chemistry is really exciting. As dorky as this is going to sound, the first thing I did once I found out about the chemistry was to go into my basement to go through my boxes of all my school papers from the past 4 years. I immediately grabbed my course notes from my chem 111 and 112 class, their respsective quizzes and exams, my ACS study guide book, and my chem 108 course notes that I had when I tutored. At first glance I was like sweet I want to take all this with me, but I know that I can't...grr. how am I going to decide what to take? The only thing I can come up with at this time is that I'm going to try and fit in as much as I can. Obviously I will also be bringing my Chemistry text book. Although I have been told the students would have text books and there is a set curriculm for me to teach any type of supplemental stuff I could bring myself would be helpful, so I really do want to bring what I can. I am also considering bringing my atom/molecule set because that could be a fun thing to use with the students, or even just to make something and have that sitting on my desk..not to mention it would give me a reason to play with it myself..haha, side note: I still have my 'pet' from orgo, do you?

Since I only have 15 days left this week is my last chance at shopping for anything/everything else that I could possibly still need. Oh and not too mention its also Christmas shopping time...

Aside from getting myself ready to leave for a year I am also getting ready for Christmas, which in my family means A LOT. Today we went tree shopping. We picked out a tree pretty quickly, I think it only took us about 45 minutes. And believe it or not this year our tree is one of our smallest in years. I would hazard a guess the tree is around 7 ft, compared to our normal 12 footer. So we got our tree set up and its chillin to let the branches lay down so we can put up the lights and all the ornaments tomorrow. The rest of the day was spent putting up outside lights. Now that was some fun.
This coming week will be filled with packing and cleaning and baking and hopefully some quality christmas music! I can't wait for all of it.. especially the baking, or maybe I'm just excited for the eating that comes after the baking. Either way it should be an exciting week, which hopefully will be culminating with one sweet going away party I am throwing for myself. :)