i.am.chabebe

Hello again to my blog! I have been actively avoiding updating my blog for several reasons. Here they are in no particular order:

1. I am too busy trying to plan lessons that will make students fall in love with physics

2. I am too busy trying to maintain my 4.0 GPA in grad school

3. I am too busy tying to train for my second half marathon

4. Because some of my students like to stalk me on the internet

In any case, I am currently trying to take a break from working on my massive grad school assignment so what a better time to update.

The good news is that the school year is almost over and I somehow have almost survived another year of teaching and grad school. A few weeks ago I went away to Ecuador for spring break. It was the first time I had been back since I went for my best friend’s wedding in December of 2011. As usual I tried to do as many touristy things in my home country as I could!

Tequila my old girl <3[/caption] [caption id="attachment_2515" align="aligncenter" width="225"] My friend Sergio’s daughter, Monica Charlotte <3 <3!![/caption] [caption id="attachment_2516" align="aligncenter" width="300"] My cousin’s daughter Valentina <3[/caption][caption id="attachment_2517" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Playas Ecuador, fun, sun, hammocks and exotic fruits

Fun in high altitude in Alausi, Ecador at the Nariz del Diablo (Nose of the Devil!)

Nariz del Diablo

More high altitude adventures. Chimorazo, Ecuador

The highest I have ever been, 5100m or 16,700ft. Chimborazo in the background

Finished off my trip with an excellent beach adventure

One of the perks of being a teacher is that after working insanely hard from September – June, I get the months of July and August off. Although I haven’t had to teach a class all summer, I have been in graduate school taking two classes as well as planning an getting ready for the next school year. But lets not talk about the less exciting things I have done this summer and focus instead of the fun things I have gotten to do!

The summer started off with an awesome journey to Michigan via Chicago to spend 4 days camping at Electric Forest. I went with a group of seven other friends and we spent 4 awesome days listening to awesome music and camping. Here are just a few of the pictures we took.

After the four days I spent one final day in Chicago before flying home.

With all my luggage at The Bean

Looking at Chicago from 96 floors up

Shortly after returning from that trip it was the fourth of July and I headed to the Jersey Shore with some friends. Spent four awesome days relaxing in the sun, in the pool and at the beach.

Fun in the Sun!

Not all was fun and games. I spent a lot of time doing school work and taking exams while all this was happening. I even completed an online exam on my phone while floating in the pool one afternoon.

A few weeks after that I took a trip to Montreal for my friend Amy’s bachelorette party. We spend 4 awesome days hanging out in one of my favorite cities, eating smoked meat at Schwartz, hanging out late night at the Saint Suplice, riding bikes 20 miles along Canal Lachine, eating delicious crepes, walking around Mount Royal watching the drum circle. hanging out on the Parc John Drapeau on St. Helen’s Island, eating delicious foie grias and pigs foot at Au Pie Du Cachon and walking around old town eating poutine.

Bikes, Notre Dame and Crepes

Clockwise from top left of long picture: Kristen, me, Amy, Bassey and Stephanie

And finally, the last adventure I have had until now was going out boating for the day with my old engineering design co-workers from Hamilton Sundstrand . We departed from  Old Lyme beach in CT and ended up at Napatree Beach in Rhode Island.

Unfortunately the summer is almost over and I just finished my last graduate class of the summer. I have a few weeks to get myself organized for the beginning of the next school year and then the craziness starts all over again, but with a new batch of kids! I’ll have to admit I am going to miss my old classes and will be lucky if this year I have students that are as awesome as they were.

A few weekends ago I had the opportunity to go on the senior class trip for the high school I teach at. We went up to a place called pine grove dude ranch and in short, I had a ton of fun despite having to be a responsible adult on the trip. I had the opportunity to go paintballing with a group of students. It was me and one other chaperon, Ms. Tellez who is also new in the science department at my school and teaches living environment.

After single handedly capturing the flag for my team during the first game, I became the main target for the rest of the game. Let me tell you, getting shot at with paintballs that refuse to explode hurts like crazy. But it was fun nonetheless.

Here is a picture of all the chaperons. I think the adults on the trip had just as much fun as the students =)

As a new teacher in an incredibly underfunded high school, I have to think outside of the box to get any sort of resources for my students. Unfortunately, at my school, paper to print hand outs on is a commodity and don’t get me started on textbooks. Before I embark on a huge project of trying to acquire all these resources, I have started out small by trying to establish a source of motivation for my kids.

This school year, I want to make sure my students have the materials they need to succeed and dream big. So I’ve created a classroom project request on a 501(c)3 charity website called DonorsChoose.org.

This week only, any donation you make to my project will be doubled! If you know anyone who is passionate about education, please pass this along. Your tax-deductible donation will have a direct impact on at least 140 students (and many more in the future), and you’ll hear back from our class about your impact on our learning!

To learn more or donate:

1.     Visit my Teacher Page, http://www.donorschoose.org/we-teach/1539716 or my Project Page: http://goo.gl/ntDKY
2.     Choose one of my projects (I only have one posted right now), enter the amount of your donation, and click “Give”
3.     During check-out, enter the word INSPIRE where it says “Match or gift code”, and your donation will be matched dollar for dollar.

The INSPIRE match code will double your donation for the next 7 days.

Please feel free to send me any questions you may have, and know that my students and I greatly appreciate your support.

This is what my vision will hopefully look like….

I have spent the last several days learning how to write lesson plans for 9th grade algebra topics. Although it sounds very simple, SOOOOOOOO much work goes into lesson planning. We have been working at our school site for the past few days. As I was walking around from class to class I noticed this awesome mural

I love that it says “Believe in yourself and stop trying to convince others”

Also, in my lesson planning adventures, I was trying to think of an interesting ice breaker to have the students do on the first day. My team decided that we would ask each person to introduce themselves and tell us one interesting fact about themselves. Though I came up with a few for myself (falling into the CT river, having a patent, fencing in college…) I thought the most interesting and possibly thought provoking thing I could share was my travel experiences. I decided I would share the number of countries I had traveled to but I had honestly never stopped to count them up before and so I wrote up a list

I don’t know how in writing that I completely forgot Peru so it should be 19 countries total. It’s a shame they didn’t let me get on the plane when I was supposed to go to Scotland because then I would have been in the 20’s!! Oh well, just have the keep the adventures going!!!

This past Friday I decided I was tired of studying so I decided to go for a bike ride. I hadn’t been on my bike since Ride Your Bike to work day in May and it was about time! I also had to do some errands in Chinatown so I figured I would kill 2 birds with one stone.

Before I left I mapped out my route. Check out my approximate route to and from NYC.

I took a detour before going home and stopped at Washington Square Park to enjoy the beautiful weather. Got a good picture of the green monster there. Yea that’s right, I call my bike the green monster 🙂

All in all it was about a 13 mile ride.

So a few things have happened since I last posted. First let me talk about some history in the making.

Space X Succesfully Launched their Dragon capsule atop of the Falcon 9 Rocket

Then the Space Station robotic arm captured Dragon after its rendezvous

Then the Dragon hatch door was opened to the ISS

And finally, the historic splashdown

For me, having worked in the space industry, this is quite epic news. Hopefully Space X can continue to successfully continue to make progress in the commercial space race!

And in some of my own Space News….I was interviewed for a magazine article!!!

More to come on some more things that have happened in the last few days!

So I’m in Montreal Canada right now and what I have seen a lot of in the short amount of time I have been here is some pretty spectacular street art. This rooster caught my eye in particular

I finally finished up my latest knitting project. YES I KNIT AND I AM NOT A GRANDMA. After getting myself a new 13″ laptop to replace the 15″ I regifted to my mom, I found the sleeve I used to have was no good for the smaller laptop. So I decided the best thing to do was make a sleeve myself. I present to you my latest creation:

Now that I have completed that project, I have moved quickly onto another one. After returning from my trip to Thailand I was curious about reading a bit more about Buddhism since we were at all times surrounded by the religion and I found myself knowing very little about it. Before wanting to jump straight into learning purely about Buddhism, I decided to entertain the thought first by reading The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. Now that I am almost done reading it, I decided to create my very own Mandala as my response to the book. Below is a picture of just the beginning of it. Although it is not an exact representation of Mandala, this is my interpretation that has its own significance to me.

Lets see how long this one takes me!

One thing I have seen a lot on this vacation besides temples and Buddhas are kitties.