10 days and counting!

So, we're down to 10 days until we leave for Tanzania! The past 7 months have flown by with grad school and teaching. This weekend I started to pack. Laren will be fine. He will just take some clothes out of the closet and put them in a bag. As high maintenance as he appears, he really only needs hair gel and a toothbrush. I on the other hand have the fear that I need to be prepared for absolutely anything. Any other time I've traveled there's always a store within a few miles that I can get the necessities from. Well, that's not happening here which means I'm going to be prepared for any possible thing I can think of. Crazy? Maybe.. But it's the teacher in me and I just can't help it.

We've gotten almost everything accomplished on our "before we leave "
packing list except a few things. I'm so thankful my friend Becky is going to stay at our house most of the month. Our fur babies will be so happy to have her here, but I'm sure going to miss them.

My grad school semester ended way earlier than planned so I'm just coasting through the rest of the school year. We had two snow days this year which pushed the last day of school back to the day we leave.

I feel bad not spending the last day of school with my students, so we're going to celebrate the day before. They have so many questions about where I'm going and what I'm going to be doing there. I showed them some videos I found on YouTube and pictures of Tanzania. After the video was over I knew they'd have lots of questions and I was so excited to tell them all about my trip. I teach 4th grade and I what I love about that age is their sense of humor and the fact that most of them have no filter and say whatever is on their minds. Of course they wanted me to bring them elephant poop ( we read about the different things people in Africa ha used it for). Something about the word poop is just so funny when your teacher says it.

What we talked about the most was how the schools are so different and how lucky we are to have the things we need in order to learn. As a teacher I feel frustrated when we don't have the latest technology in our schools. I know this trip will really resonate with the teacher in me more than anything.