Halloween, 2nd Grade, and DayQuil

Many updates!

#1: The ladies in charge of the student teaching program with Chicago Semester invited the Spring 2009 student teachers to Chicago for a day to meet, greet, visit, and get our questions answered. The visit day was on Halloween which in and of itself was amazing! We did three school visits, spoke with a few current student teachers, and became more familiar with our surroundings (the Chicago Semester offices and, of course, the city). It was a great day! The weather was perfect and it was so nice to meet some of the other student teachers ahead of time. I was pretty excited :)

#2: I've been placed! I will be student teaching in a 2nd grade classroom at Farnsworth Elementary on the north side of the city. I requested a K-3rd grade placement but secretly hoped for 2nd :) So far, I'm thinking Farnsworth will be a great fit :)

Big, eh? Here's the killer - I will have about an hour commute. Eeek! Apparently Google has a Public Transportation Directions Generator which, to my surprise, informed me that I will need to:

a) Walk to the bus stop.
b) Take the bus to the Blue Line.
c) Take the Blue Line to the designated stop.
d) Walk to my destination.

Yey? Naw, I'm looking forward to it. I like having time like this to just sit back and relax. I'm a people watcher, too, which should be fun :) My question is this: Exactly what time will I need to be there each morning? This could be an issue.

I've been working on my packing list. I'm organizing it with tables, bold, italicized, and underlined fonts, and, of course, colors. Ha! My mind would be exploding if I didn't do such things. Currently, the bulk of my list is surprisingly not in the food or clothing sections, but rather in the First Aid and Wellness sections. I know, crazy right? Cough Drops, Cold Ease, Tums, Sudafed, Zyrtec, Heating Pads, DayQuil, NyQuil, Vitamin Water, Tissues, GHA! My biggest fear, over everything else, is getting sick. I know that I won't want to miss any school, so I'm dreading the day that I have to teach closed-figured polygons and Homophones with a cold. I'm sure the kids wouldn't mind me teaching with a tissue lodged in my nose, but I'm not too sure I could survive what it would do for my reputation as an effective and professional educator. Maybe I'll keep that remedy for the comfort of my couch and stick to the DayQuil.

It's getting close :)