Teacher, Teacher.

Damn, It's been a year so far. Got "home" from Europe after an amazing time, hung out in New England for a few weeks, moved back to Texas, dabbled in freelance adventure work, chilled with my nephew, spent time with friends, and now... back to work. The first day of school is Monday. Football practice started a few weeks back, and apparently I'm a football coach again. As well as softball. I have no words for that last sentence: softball...really?

It's super exciting. I love being a teacher. I remember telling Lynds how much I missed it the first semester of Grad school, during the annual bombardment of facebook with first day of school posts. I questioned everything, because it took being away to realize how much I adore this profession. I adore teaching, I adore Carter Riverside, I adore the kids I teach. Every single one of them (I take that back, there are some goobers). So I guess I adore most of the kids. But if time has shown me anything, it's that the kids who are irritating as hell, sometimes, turn into amazing adults whom I'm incredibly proud to have given my small "This one's ok-ish" stamp. And if you wonder, yes, I'm always honest: aka "you were a shithead in HS, who would have thunk you'd be doing what you're doing." This is a good move in my life. I think teaching will provide rigidity and the selfless constitution I need to get back to.

It's a weird space for me. As are most things I guess. It's strange, at some point someone told me "you never get better, you just get different." I don't know if truer words have ever been spoken. My classroom is the same as when I left teaching four years ago. I open the door of my Learning Cottage (It's not a portable classroom if it's been there for 40 years), and remember LJ sitting on the railing of the walkway with lunch she brought me. I remember the kids telling me how she was totally out of my league. I remember putting up whiteboards Lynds and I bought because the district refused to give me any. My classroom bears witness to the orange wall she and I painted in order to spice up my classroom. I have the same coaching complaints I had years ago, but don't have her to muse about them anymore. I mowed the practice field today (yup, in FWISD the coaches are responsible for mowing our own fields...), and thought about how happy it would make her when I would mow our yard in New Hampshire. It reminds me of the days of my American Dream.

Being a teacher is an honor. I had an offer to run a retail store for twice what I will make teaching, and I had to make the calls to CRHS to try one last time to be a teacher again. I thought about the response I would have to give if I worked retail. I am proud of my profession, and I'll take making less and being able to say "I'm a teacher" anyday. If I'm totally honest, I'm terrified of being back in the classroom. It's been four years. Do I have it in me anymore? I've lost the energy, care and ability to cope with so many things in my life. I don't play board games anymore. I can count the number of times I've cooked a meal since she died on one hand. God I hope teaching is different. I know it will be. I have always thrived. I will always thrive. I refuse to be defined by tragedy. She wouldn't have let me. I'm nervous of the question "Yo Coach, are you married?" But I refuse to hide anything from my kids. If asked in a respectful way, I do not believe there are any inappropriate questions. Creative answers? Yes, but no hiding, lying or being upset with questions. So what is my response going to be. Honesty... Is it a reality that I may lose my shit if a kid asks the right questions on the right day? Absolutely. It's ok to be human, especially when many students never realize that teachers have feelings/lives/exist outside of school.

I have more to say, but I worked 15 hours yesterday and 8 today, I'm nowhere near as eloquent as I like to be, and I have stuff that I should be doing for class on Monday. Suffice it to say that I have amazing people and colleagues in my life. I feel loved. I feel supported. I feel happy with my new (old?) job. It's time to rebuild my shattered American Dream. Hopefully this is the first step... It has to be.

London to Alacante

As I sit next to Seth on this "first class" train, were currently headed to Montpelier, France. We're trying to get to Nice, but the Spanish train station could only get us to Montpelier, and they told us it was our issue to get any farther. I put "first class" in quotations because by US standards, this is a cattle car. I mean, at least we have more space than our multiple second class tickets. I think this is the same train car my mom probably took in Switzerland in the 60's. So we've been pretty busy so far, so I'll start at the beginning and try to put some sense to what we've done. One thing is our pictures (save London and most of Paris, because I need to change the file type to upload them, doh!) are on flickr. It should be flickr.com/matt_and_seth_Europe.html thats a bad link, but i'll try to figure it out before too long.

London: So I missed my flight but Seth made his and kinda got a lay of where we were staying so that was nice. We used London as a place to get our bearings, you know, cause they speak English. We did all the basic sight seeing stuff, London Bridge, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eye, Banksy Art, Jack the Ripper stuff, yeah...it was a world wind. The highlight for both of us was New Years Eve in London. We, as is kinda our MO, had made no plans. We had however made pretty awesome friends with some Australians (also now our MO). They had tickets to a place called the Somerset House to watch the fireworks, but on the day of, two friends bailed due to sickness. And seeing as our new Australian friends had just made two new American friends, we won out. Free tickets to the Somerset House, which is a palace right on the river Thames. There was free champagne, no crowds (other than the plebes outside the gates by the drove), fellowship (ok, maybe more than fellowship for two of my compatriots, including Seth...) and just a damn fine time. Some things I'll mention but not go into detail because they are funnier if told in person: I got kicked out of Somerset House, I sent Seth a text about said expulsion, I ate a ghost Hotdog, and Seth may have liberated some of his champagne: "don't worry, i got a towel." Yeah it was a damn fine time. A+ to the Australians.

Paris: We went on a bus...that then went on a train...that then went under the ocean. A little trippy still. Never really been on a bus that they just pulled right onto a train. I guess thats how you do the chunnel. Paris was a good time. Another world wind. We kinda decided that Paris should be called "Land of stairs." We did some awesome things in Paris, and a lot of it was in honor of Lynds. The day before she passed away we talked about how bad she wanted to go, so we spent the anniversary of her death doing two of those things, the Louve and Notre Dame. The Louve is, as it is billed, amazing. One interesting thing about it was the lack of English on anything, you think for the highest regarded museum in the world, it would be multilingual, nope, just French. Lots of cool things, no idea what they were. Notre Damn was amazing. It's an amazing cathedral and we spent some time there and lit a candle in her honor. While she was anti-catholic, she would definitely appreciate the sentiment. It was shortly after I realized that the moment I lit that candle was almost exactly the time that I last heard from her a year previous. Chilling... Other things we did in Paris were climbing the Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower, Moulin Rouge, and lots of other things... It's really stunning and kinda jarring when you are just walking down the street and the Eiffel Tower is just RIGHT THERE.

Barcelona: Ahh...Barcelona... There is a reason Barcelona has such a good reputation. Probably because it's freaking awesome. Oh, and the Catalan don't get presents from Santa...they get presents from the "Christmas Shit." The kids feed a small poop candy and food every night and the poop gets bigger and bigger until its big enough and they hit the massive Christmas shit with sticks like a piñata and it has presents... That means the parents must have a bunch of differing sized Christmas craps in their closet... so many things to contemplate. We really liked the beach culture of Barcelona, we did a lot of touristy stuff and also just kinda chilled. The castle of Montjuic was awesome and had some cool views. We also went to the oldest Synagogue in Europe which was pretty cool as well. It definitely gives you some perspective when you compare the everyday chapels and basilicas to the oldest Synagogue. With a name like "Synagogue Major" you would assume it wasn't a two room alcove off a minor street. It's striking the difference. Christians seem to like to make statements, and the Jews just want to be. Speaking of Christians: Seth and I had many conversations at a lot of the churches and cathedrals that they sometimes take a hundred years or more to build and how crazy that is. Then we went to La Sagrada Familia. The church was started around 1900... and is STILL being built. It's amazing to watch workers taking a cement mixer to the top, going "your great great grandparents could have been doing the same thing, and your children will probably being doing it too..." The church is AMAZING. You feel like you're in a forest when in the main chamber. A forest with 100 foot concrete trees. We also experienced a Barca game. While I've never been a soccer fan, it was fun as all hell. Watching Barcelona play soccer is amazing. Those dudes know how to play the game. It's like watching Verlander pitch, or Kobe play basketball. A fun experience was had by all. Some interesting observations: no announcer, the stadium is totally bland by American standards and they ran out of food at concessions. Did that last one sink in? THEY RAN OUT OF FOOD. American stadiums throw out TONS of food just to make sure that Bubba can get his cheesy fries in the 4th. Nope, not in Spain, they made what appeared to be almost enough. Except Seth and I were hungry and there was no food to be had. Jerks.

Lisbon: Portugal! Yeah...Bon Dia... Shit Portuguese is way different than Spanish. We arrived after my food poisoning, and a half day train to Madrid, then a 6 hour "try not to puke" layover then the night train in a second class non sleeper car. It sucked. Bad. We arrived and went to our hostel hoping to at least drop our packs and then wander a bit before we could check in. Then the magical hostel man dropped a bomb on us: Oh, you can just go to your room, and have breakfast. It was 8am, with check in not until like 3 or 4. That man should be a damn saint. We had breakfast, chilled, I took a three hour nap, and then we explored. We made our next good Aussie friend in our hostel there, and we had dinner in the Hostel and just enjoyed the company and Portuguese cooking... at least a little. Portuguese food is not for me. It may have been the remnants of my stomach's mutiny, but nothing seemed to sit super well with me. Seth seemed to enjoy it! Lisbon is a cool little city, lots of stairs. Yeah, Europeans aren't skinny because of smaller portions, its the crap breakfast (toast-esque things and croissants EVERY DAY? McDonalds doesn't even have breakfast sandwiches in Spain) and stairs EVERYWHERE. We saw a lot of the sights, experienced the flea market (lots of porn it turns out), and had a fairly laid back time. One highlight for us both was finding new music in the hostel lobby. Chinese Man is good stuff. The songs "Get up" and "Race to the Sun" are amazing. 2 points to whoever had that playing in the lobby.

Alicante Spain: We went to Alicante to see a friend of Seth's from College. It's a little beach town on the Mediterranean. It was really chilled out and the only real tourist thing we did was going to the Castle of Santa Barbara. It was really cool. We went to the "tour" and realized it was only us two and the guide. Not a better one hour tour for 3 euros each. A lot of the tour involved her making fun of British tourists and asking us to correct her English.

Yeah. It's been a trip so far. Now we head to Nice hopefully and from there it's a rally in Monte Carlo (and gambling...damn I love Casinos...), Switzerland, then Italy. We are both so excited to eat our faces off in Italy. Hmmmm...real food... I can almost taste it now...yeah...but unfortunately I'm on this damn train for the next 8 hours. I guess train car sandwiches will do...