Green Christmas

After much delay, here are some pictures from our Brazzale Family Christmas. If any of you out there have more pictures from this grand event, I would love to see them.



Highlights of the evening included eating delicious Italian food (I helped with the ravioli!), beating my uncles in Cribbage (Aunt Cathy, you and I make a great team. Let's keep that up.), playing a crazy Euro version of Jenga (can anybody tell me the name of that game?) and listening to Dad and Uncle Tony sing.

But....the proudest moment for me was when all of the extended family was downstairs watching football, me, Dad, Mom and Nick were upstairs by ourselves watching the Planet Earth series. While people were yelling and cheering for tackles, we were mesmorized by a wierd bug that lives in the rainforest. If you haven't seen any of the Planet Earth series, it's amazing. Disney is putting together a lot of the same footage for a movie called Earth this spring. You should check out the trailer on Youtube.

Come to think of it, I am a big fan of Mother Nature. I remember watching the March of the Penguins for the first time in Provo, and while everyone else had fallen asleep I was wide awake and crying because I was so moved by the plight of the mother penguin. And, now that I think of it, my only publication so far was about environmental stewardship for a BYU environmental journal. I guess I really am a tree hugger.

I am still surviving student teaching. One month down, three more to go!

Student Teaching and Bolivia

Well, I'm in deep and there's no getting out. I've been student teaching for a week now at Laramie High School in the Spanish department, and it's been a trip. My mentor teacher is the head wrestling coach, so I've learned a lot about wrestling. I personally, have always thought of wrestling as a disgusting sport, you know, helmet ears, worms, fungi, sweat, yuck. So I sit there as wrestlers come into the class and discuss injuries, whether they want to quit or not, etc, and I try to keep my grossed out face to myself. And there's no one else in the classroom to laugh with, so it wouldn't be any fun to joke anyways.


Another good story is that this student brought in a gold fish and asked me to watch it for him, because it was his friend's and it wasn't getting any oxygen in the locker. The fish was dead. So I babysat a dead fish all day. When the owner came in, she started shrieking only as a 15 year old girl could, and she called her mom and melodramtically conveyed her broken heart over the floating orange blob.


I also had a student critize my handwriting, because he didn't like the way I made my 'r'. Great times. I'm loving it. Teaching is hilarious, and rewarding.



Other good news. UW is sending me and a classmate to Bolivia for spring break to do some research for the education department here. It's a free trip! This is definitely not something that happens to me ever, so I'm thrilled. Evo Morales, alpaca for dinner, and the smell of burning coca leaves. Can't wait.