new blog

My sister and I have started a food blog.  You can find our culinary wanderings here!

some early photos with Mom

Mom is here for my spring break and we spent some time at the Keukenhof gardens today. Here are some shots. We'll update with more pictures later this week.

Long overdue

So, I have a ton of photos on my laptop that I keep meaning to update. So, I am taking a drizzly afternoon to update you on various things that have happened since, oh... January :-) To keep it easy, I'll go in chronological order.


When Lindsay came to visit in January, we went to the Muiderslot castle in Muiden. It was really lovely and we had a lot of fun.


We climbed turrets...


Tried on costumes...


And if you can guess what I am doing here, I'll buy you a drink!


And then Lindsay and I went to Berlin to visit Rachel and Alyssa. It was so beautiful.


We loved German candybars!


So, I mentioned before that the great author, John Green, was coming for a visit. It was a great event at the school, and 2 days later I, along with my friends Kim and Katrina, had a chance to go hang with all three visiting authors in Amsterdam. John Green was inundated with Nerdfighters (google it), so we spent most of the evening with his wife and the other authors. This photo is Katrina and Kim on the train. We were excited to have a girl's night out!


Here I am with the book I want John to autograph.


Here's a still life I took on the train ride. Katrina and I were excited to have an opportunity to put on our faces.


We saw this in Amsterdam and thought the sign was hilarious.


The still life photos continue. Wine + fun book= fun time.


This is what our evening looked like. Here you see Jordan Sonnenblick and Steve Klugar. Great YA authors who kept us rolling with hilarious stories.


We were pleasantly surprised to hear from our friend Jon Kamer. He is getting married next month and was taking a cross-Europe trip with his friend Chris. We were happy to have them for a few evenings. As you can see, Kamer enjoyed his Dutch pancake!


Last week I had a Scrabble night with my friends Jaqui and Irene. It was really fun!


We taught Jaqui how to play and she almost won!

Well, that's about it. We are off to a dinner party tonight and are going to see a Dutch tv show tape on Sunday. Look forward to more pictures!


Love,

Katie

One

Tomorrow, it will have been one year since we lost John's Dad.  We miss Papa every day, but this week has been exceptionally difficult for us (especially for John).  Can you pray for us?  We need God's strength,comfort and healing.  John has been hit with a full on sinus infection on top of the emotional tumult.

This morning, I remembered a Rich Mullins song that always brings me comfort.  His cry is my cry.

Love,

Katie

Author Visit

So, we are super lucky at the school where I work.  The amazing YA author, John Green, is coming to visit next week.  (along with Steve Kluger.  Also cool.) So, I hadn't read anything by Green, but I am now making my way through his first book, Looking for Alaska.  I have, in the last week and a half, already read And Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns.  I think Green is a great author for teens and adults alike.  I suggest checking out his stuff!

Weird Dizzy Spell (and 10 tickets to Prague- stat!)

So, yesterday, I was supposed to have a writing conference with a Sophomore during my planning period. I grabbed a sub-standard cafeteria lunch and hurried to my classroom.  With no student in sight, I relaxed for a minute and sat down to catch up on email.  Hm....  The first two emails in my box were from SkyEurope, the airline that I booked for a field trip I am helping to lead in April.  I quickly opened the messages to learn that our flight has been cancelled and that we are eligible for a refund or a rebooking.  Well, a rebooking wasn't going to happen because the festival we are attending is THAT weekend and we need to arrive and depart at pretty specific times.  SO--- I freak out.  It isn't as if it's just my money at play here.  The students have each pain 600 Euros for this trip and we booked the flights on the school's Amex.  I called the airline and was told that they couldn't refund to Amex.  It was against their policy.  So, in 30 days, they will issue a refund by bank transfer.  JOY.  I had to email the school's financial officer to ask permission to book new tickets with KLM before we receive the refund from SkyEurope.  He is a great guy and says yes.  Then, I had to actually book the KLM tickets (running back and forth to the business office so they can put in the payment information).  When, finally, everything was done, I realized that I misspelled the last names of two students. Looks like I need to contact KLM today...

So, all of that running back and forth and calling a strange Eastern European airline took up 3 hours of my day-- easily.  It was pretty stressful.  I got home, called John and started making dinner.  Vegetarian burritos.  Yum.  As I pushed my chef's knife through an onion, I very suddenly felt extremely dizzy-- drunk, actually.  I could hardly stand up.  The room was spinning.  I broke out into a sweat and thought I might vomit.  I inched my way through the kitchen clinging to the counter top, where I grabbed for my mobile phone and called John at his office.  

"I'm so dizzy," I said.  

"What?"  he questioned me- clearly weirded out because we had just gotten off the phone with one another and I had been fine then.

"I can't stand up anymore.  The room is spinning.  I am so dizzy and sweaty.  What happened?"

"Okay," he answered, "just try to walk towards the livingroom.  I'll stay on the phone with you."

With the room transformed into swirling streaks of blue and red, I sloppily made my way to the couch. 

"I'm home now. Just stay there and try to rest."

"Ok-- I'm so tired.  What do you think happened?"

"I don't know, but I'll be there in a few minutes.  Just hang on."

So, John came home and I felt a bit better.  The room had stopped spinning, but I was really tired.  I, the  woman who never takes naps, laid my head down and fell asleep on the couch for 30 minutes.  John woke me up to take me out for Pizza and IKEA.  By the time we hit IKEA I felt fine.  I went to be early, slept well, and feel great this morning.

Any idea what happened to me?  Would you go to the doctor about it?  Do you think I just got really stressed over the airline tickets and it somehow affected my brain?  Where's Dr. House when you need him?

Love to All,

Katie

***Update!  I did a little googling, and after chatting with a friend, I think I had my first panic attack. Oh, rapture.***

She's got (a) class...

It's been awhile since I updated, and it's really John that needs to update with Jerusalem photos! In the mean time, I thought I would share some photos of my classroom. The school year is going well. My Sophomores are armpit-deep in Macbeth and about to start Oral Commentary. My Seniors are starting a comparative essay on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Fall of the House of Usher.  Fun stuff.  I am falling into a groove here and have a lot of respect for our leadership and my department.  Last weekend we went to the faculty "holiday" party.  On the last day of February.  I know.  Here we are dressed up and having a good time.

I promised you pictures of my classroom, though, so here you are!  Excuse the poor photography. I just used the basic camera on my ibook.

A bit boring, but this is the bulletin board behind my desk.  You can see my color coded bell schedule, a Jane Austen action figure, a South African batik piece (Thanks, Andrea!), and a movie poster some students made last year.

 

And that's my desk!  It's actually a desk with a table placed at a right angle to form a kind of L-shaped desk.  It makes writing conferences pretty convenient.  It's pretty tidy, no?

The door to my classroom.  Exciting stuff, right?  The soccer ball you see on the desk is for a game we are going to play with lines from Macbeth today.

And this is the rest of my room.  You can see my smartboard, desks, and student work on display.

For fun, I thought I would also include a video of my students playing the game I mentioned from Macbeth.  Here, two Sophomores perform a line from Act I and the rest of the class repeats it.  Good times!

Miss and Love you!

Katie