Rome

Rome is busy and bustling and for the first time it hasn't been excruciatingly hot! Little did we know the Champions Festival (or something like that) was going on last night. This would be the final soccer championship between Manchester United and Barcelona, in which the Spaniards won. We happend to be at the Spanish Steps last night after if was over and it was fun seeing all the crowds singing songs and what not. Our B&B here is really cute and a great host!

Today we saw the town gearing up for the finish of the Giro here in Rome in a few days (although we will be in Naples that day so we won't see them).

A few more photos of Rome:

7 Years

We spent our 7th wedding anniversary in Cinque Terre which was beautiful! We just got to Rome and are off to see some stuff... Here are a few pictures from around Italy!

Pisa-


Siena-


My 8th Gelato in 4 days (I love it here!)-




Tuscany-


Driving the Vespa-


Happy Anniversary-


Cinque Terre-

Tuscany

We rented a Vespa yesterday and "drove" around the countryside...we did not make it back in time to see the Giro but saw the Barloworld team cars leaving the city as we were making our way back. Oh well. Either way, it was really beautiful to just drive out in the countryside and see all the vineyards and olive tree groves.

We arrived in Siena today and it is the color of Burnt Siena. We head for our vacation within a vacation tomorrow as we go to the Italina Riviera and the towns of Cinque Terre. Each place we have been seems to be great and different in its own unique way and we are really glad we came.

Here are some pictures of our last stops in Ireland and some from Italy:
The Burren:


Cliffs of Moher:


Right Before we got stuck on the beach:


Venice:


The Basillica:

Italy

We finally made it out of Ireland and the cold and the rain! The last few days of Ireland were fun and very picturesque! We decided to drive onto the beach one day (we saw other cars do it) and ended up getting stuck in the sand. Eric spent 30 min digging us out while I kept trying to drive us out...it was quite an interesting experience. We drove a lot around the Burren and saw the Cliffs of Moher (in the rain), but our last day in Ireland we saw lots of sun and we got out and did a little hike!

Italy is HOT and crowded! Venice was way cool and we have walked around everywhere! Today we are in Florence and the Giro comes by tomorrow so that will be cool to see to! We saw Michelangeos David today which was way bigger than we had imagined, and so far our trip in the cities of Italy has been fun.

No pictures today! Maybe next time! Caio!

And for my family-
Happy 2nd Birthday Amelia! and Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! Love you all!

Pictures

We spent the day driving...driving the Ring of Kerry, Driving the Dingle Pennisula. We have found some great B&B's to stay each night. I have tried the fresh fish and chips, but most often it doesn't have any taste...is that what fresh fish is suppose to taste like?

It is beautiful here, no doubt about it, but it has been rushed so far. A few more days here and there would make our trip a little more relaxing. But there is just only so many days! We are spending the night in Dingle, the Pennisula is one of the few places left thats first language is Irish (Galeik), so we thought it would be a nice stop. Another driving day tomorrow up through the Cliffs of Moher and The Burren and on to Galway. Before our last day back across the country to Dublin and on to Italy.

Oh, the sun made an appearence today in between the rain!

Here are a few pictures from our trip:
Powerscourt


Pet Cemetary, Powerscourt:


Guiness Storehouse:


St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin


Trinity College, Dublin:


Driving on the Ring of Kerry:


Muckross House, Killarney:


Us at Rock of Cashel:


Celtic Cross at Glendalaugh:


Eric doing a great job driving on the right side of the car, left side of the road:

Colder and Wetter and No Accidents

Yesterday we started off a little late, took too long at our first two stops and then rushed to try to make the third and missed it by 4 minutes!

We stopped at the Powerscourt gardens which were pretty cool then off to Glendalaugh Monastary which had we known we wouldn't make it in time to the Rock of Cashel we would have stayed longer. Very cool park with some neat trails to hike on.

So we ended up staying in Cashel to see the castle this morning, which was nice then another 2 hours to Killarney where we spent the afternoon in the cold, wind and rain. It rained pretty good today and the wind has been crazy. But it is super green here and really pretty.

Eric has only managed to make a few wrong type turns on the roads, but is doing really well for driving on the wrong side of everything. And Ireland is the land of roundabouts!

We are now in Kenmare and will drive the Ring of Kerry tomorrow...we have heard crazy driving on the side of the cliffs, so make for a fun day. Too bad the weather forecast is rain for the next few days! Sorry, still no pictures!

Cold and Wet

Dublin is cold and drizzly...

We forgot the camera cord to post some pictures and don't know what it will be like as we venture out of the city tomorrow. I am scared about EZ's attempt to drive on the wrong side of the road, should be interesting.

It took a lot of adjusting once we got here yesterday morning. We both only managed about an hour of sleep on the flight over, they served dinner at 10:30pm and by 2:00am they were serving us breakfast.

The city is pretty neat and we have seen a lot of stuff, it is just cold and misty here. Maybe our adventures out of Dublin will be a little warmer and clearer! Tour the Guiness plant and I had a coke while ez had a beer. :) Too bad I am not a bigger beer fan!

Off to a pub with some live Irish music.

Kittens

So I have a soft heart for kitties...always have. A few months ago I rescued a cat that had been injured, they ended up amputating her leg but I have been told she is doing great now and acting just like any other cat.

Well, about 5 months ago we starting seeing a baby kitty in the dumpster across the street, it was really scared and me and my neighbors would put food out for it. Eventually she started coming to my door and eating and then she starting being really cute and friendly. So I have been working on trying to find her a home. The humane society was going to take her but then things got crazy and now they can't. Then a week or so ago, Eric and I decided we thought she might be preggers.

On top of that we leave for our trip on Tuesday so I was trying to find a place for her asap. I found a vet that would spay her and abort the kitties and this was all going to go down tomorrow.

Well Friday night pepe (that is what I call her) didn't show up to eat. What is going on??? She has come every night to our house for like 3 months now and I was thinking the worse. But no no, she showed up last night minus the belly. Now I had no clue she was that far along. She only weighed like 3 pounds to being with and is only about 8 months old. Well we followed her and found her babies, she has two.

We have them all harbored in our spare bathroom at the moment. :) Here are some pictures of cute pepe and then the so very tiny 2 day old kittens!


Here is pepe with the crazy eyes (before giving birth):



The brand new kittens:


Mama and the kitties:

Final Grades

One of my least favorite things about being a teaching is giving out grades. I do all sorts of crazy percentages and stuff to try and help out the students, and most of the time all is good. I have submitted grades for 3 of my 4 classes. The last class I am done with the grading but I haven't yet decided on the actual grades to give out.

The problem becomes, do I curve the final exam...it was hard, but not TOO hard. Especially since I allow students to have a 5x7 notecard with anything they want on it. Yet still the grades were really low, and then if I do curve the final, how much to curve it? I messed around with different curves, 3pts, versus 5pts, no pts. And what happened this semester is that almost 2/3 of my class went up a +/- letter grade with a curve. Most of the time my grades are pretty good, I don't have a lot of borderline people, this was one of the first semesters it was this bad.

I have problems with curving a exam, especially one that you get a "cheat sheet on". And in a class where I have give out an opportunity for some extra credit. I really think that the students at HPU don't care that much about their grades. They aren't studying enough, or not studying correctly. One of my students is transferring to Virgina Tech because he says their is no competition in the classroom, that other students just don't care that much. I really think that is true.

Well, at least I am DONE with exams, done with grading, just have to decide to be nice and bump grades up or be mean and leave them as is.

Sometimes I wonder

If my students ever pay attention to what I am saying...

If I say that I will replace your lowest test grade with the final exam grade if it is higher, then hand out a sheet with the same sentence on it, then still get an email from a student (who was in class) asking if I will replace the lowest test grade with the final, obviously they were not paying attention.

What does that say about the rest of the semester???

I decided to completely ignore the email...don't know if it was the best way to handle it, but it is too frustrating to handle incompetent students.

T Minus 8 days

One final down...three to go. A Friday evening spent at a Baccalaureate , Sat morning listening to Buzz Aldrin speak at Graduation.

Then a little r&r and what hopefully will be a great vacation!

Read 2 more books:

"Ask Again Later" by Jill Davis. An quick fast paced read about a woman and her life, dealing with different issues in her family. It was pretty good.

"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink. Quick read as well and really interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. While I didn't really like the characters in the novel, the story was good and the writing was good.

Math Competition

A while ago, I posted that our Math Club that I am trying to get going decided they wanted to host a local math competition, to which I was told there was no way I could pull it off. This said competition was this past Saturday, and it went surprisingly well. My students did work hard, and they did submit questions to me with answers, but the problem was, many were just not that difficult.

Now a week ago, I had only 1 team that had entered the competition. I panicked...what do I do??? Then I got an email saying another team was sending 2 teams. Ok, so now we are up to 3. I sent an email out to many schools who told me they wanted to come. And I got 2 more teams. So the competition ran with 5 teams, which for the first year, isn't so bad.

I think it was pretty successful, other than the fact that I was spending Thursday and Friday nights at my computer coming up with questions. The bad thing was, I did this so last minute, that I was doing my solutions late Friday night, and I had a few incorrect answers. Yikes, I am no math teacher right! Luckily, some of the other teachers were doing the problems and a few challenged my answers. I think on the total of 61 questions, I had 2 incorrect.

We will probably do it again next year, with some modification and I think we can have twice as many teams come, so that will be great.

I am feeling better, I think I am finally over my sickness...I went for two walk/runs last week. Only running a total of 10 min each time, which was rough, and went for a 22 min run yesterday. It was not the best feeling, but what do I expect after a 3 week hiatus of being sick and stressed out.

Only 3 more days of class....then final exams, semester is almost over!

Still Sick

Still alive but still sick...on another round of meds and feeling better but still have to sleep propped up on pillows or I cough all night long and just keep coughing and coughing all day...

The Thirteenth Tale...one of the best books I have read in a really long time. Extremely interesting and great writing style!

Detrained

I think I have run a total of 2 times in the past two weeks. Things got hectic, then we were in Detroit. We came back and next thing I know I am crazy sick with 101 degree fever. I am on some meds but I am severely tired and coughing up tons of stuff. Together, this does not make for good training. I was planning on doing a 5K before our trip but that will not be happening. Oh well. Looks like just more getting out of shape.

Finished a couple more books: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett which was pretty good. The story of a a terrorist group crashing in on birthday party trying to kidnap the president of Argentina who decides not to attend the party at the last minute. The story is mainly about all the different relationships that form between the different people that are there. It was good for me but not great.

We listened to Away by Amy Bloom to and from Detroit. It is the story of a girl who loses her family and travels to US to find work. Then she hears that her daughter might be alive and it goes through the journey of her trying to make her way to Siberia where she might be. The story becomes basically a collection of other stories of her travels and the people she meets. It was interesting and a decent read.

I am currently reading The Thirteenth Tale which is really good so far. I am thoroughly liking this somewhat mystery novel.

Thieves in Detroit

A summary of the strangest weekend I might have ever had:

Friday afternoon: drove 11 hours to MI, arrived at 11:37pm. Left my school bag in my car parked in my parents driveway. Bag contained purse.

Saturday morning: 7:45am I go out to the car...car has been broken into. Bag with school stuff (aka school laptop) and purse are gone. File a police report.

Sat evening: attend final four games...Go Tar Heels!!!

Sun morning: MI police recover my bags!! Minus the school laptop, brand new cell phone, money and TI-89 Calculator. My quizzes I was going to grade are still there...so my students will not receive all A's. And thank you to the thieves you left my purse which had my wallet, 2 pairs of sunglasses, and 2 inhalers. I at least don't have to get all new cards for grocery stores and libraries and my drivers license.

Sun evening: the craziest game of cards with my family...my sister was in the rarest of all forms!

Mon: pack all our stuff in the car to drive home after the game. Watch UNC win the national championship game!! Yeah!!! Kind of a blowout, but fun to be a UNC fan!!
We walk back to our car to find stuff from our trunk all over the ground by our car. What the heck...another car break in! Is my car screaming "come to me"??? This time the GPS is stolen but nothing else. They left our stuff on the ground for us to pick up.

At least no broken windows right?

Who has this kind of luck to have your car broken into twice in 3 days. I am not so upset about anything except the laptop...the school laptop, with all of my work for all of my classes on it. The rest of the "stuff" is replaceable.

Why hadn't I backed up my files over the past year???? :)

I am avoiding Michigan at all costs. No more visiting the family for a while until the economy turns around!

Random Thoughts

1. Am I the only one who just doesn't understand Twitter? It seems like it is just a status bar on Facebook that you can update at your choosing. So what is so special about this? And why are so many people saying (on facebook even) that they are addicted to it?

2. I am a secret Kelly Clarkson fan...always have been. Her songs make me smile and are great beats to run to, and I like her new song out right now. Actually, EZ secretly likes her too.

3. The weather here is finally going to settle down and stop bouncing between getting warm and then cold again. This will be a huge relief because my allergies finally had enough this past week and I felt like my head was living in a cloud. Getting better, but going out to exercise has been tough. Even using my inhaler, I have been having issues breathing.

4. Major sporting events should not be played at 10:00pm. First, I don't think athletes are used to having to play a game that late, it is unfair to them right! And second, I cannot stay up that late night after night watching these bball games. You west coast people get it easy.

5. Someone told me my eyes were mesmerizing the other day. I have very dark black eyes, so dark that you can barely see my pupils, like black holes, they suck you in! This isn't normal, as I have never met any one else with eyes this dark, so does that make it part recessive gene? And since EZ has blue eyes, which is recessive, I wonder what kind of eyes our kids will have (when we have kids).

Books of the Month

My latest readings:

Night by Elie Wiesel. This was an extremely short memoir of Wiesel's account of the days leading up to his deportation to Auschwitz and then his days at the concentration camp. I read it in a couple hours and once I picked it up I didn't put it down. It was very touching and interesting to hear the story told from his perspective. I also have his two short stories Dawn and day to read as well. Highly recommend this book to anyone.

An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor. Our book club picked this in honor of St. Patty's day. It was a cute story, and some fun irish speak, but I just thought it was OK. I wasn't fond of the style of writing, VERY wordy, and I just don't like that. And many of my book club people agreed with the style and we all seemed to say we found ourselves skimming over sections at a time. But many of them really liked the story of the simplicity of this little village and the story of the people who live there.

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. This is a classic novel about the story of a chinese farmer who rises up to power through his land. I really liked the story of being attached to something so valuable to live off the land and have it pay you back in return. But in the process of rising to power, I was heartbroken at his children's generation and how he thought he was helping them move up in the world and give them things he did not have, but in return his children did not see the value of the land and what it gave them. I understand why this is a classic book and I enjoyed it!

I have given up on the Omnivores Dilemma. And currently am just starting Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (my book club suggestion for next month).

Haagen Dazs Five

Haagen Dazs has created an all natural ice cream they call "five." This stands for just 5 ingredients-milk, cream, sugar, egg, and the flavor:

Vanilla, Passion Fruit, Ginger, Brown Sugar, Coffee, Chocolate, and Mint

I am a member of SheSpeaks-an online organization that reviews products and shares what they learn about them. It is all free and then they send you products to try and review. So when I got an email asking if I would taste Haagen Dazs new ice cream...Helllooo, of course! They wanted me to have an ice cream tasting party, so yesterday 8 people came over and we tasted all 7 flavors of the ice cream. Shespeaks sent me the ice cream and coupons and recipies to hand out, plus little cups and spoons for the tasting.

It was quite fun and I must say, the ice cream is really good. The ginger was rather interesting, if you like ginger it is definitely worth trying. And the Brown Sugar flavor was different too, but good. My favorites were the passion fruit and the mint. But they all were very smooth and creamy, yum yum!!

Two Great Games

Wow! The games at here in Greensboro yesterday were so much fun! Put 20000 people, 1/3 of which hate UNC and 2/3 of which hate Duke, made for two fun games. The UNC/LSU game was really exciting. And the Duke fans cheered for LSU as if they were Duke. I must say the Duke students are the best fans. Chanting and screaming the entire time. You would think that after so many years, the UNC students would step it up. Either way, it was exciting to see the Heels play great against a strong LSU team.

The Duke/Texas game was interesting. Texas hung around most of the game but played really sloppy, missing who knows how many free throws and numerous turnovers. Texas lost the game because of their own mistakes. Really, not a lot of play calling and team work. Duke didn't play all that well, so in the end, the game was great. And once Texas finally tied it up with a few minutes, the entire UNC crowd was on their feet cheering for Texas. And as much as I don't usually cheer for Texas, I just can't cheer for Duke!! It was quite a fun Saturday.

It has been an exciting tourny so far! Thanks T for the tix! Here is EZ enjoying the Duke/Texas game:

Uncomfortable Seats

We were lucky enough to score awesome tickets to the first 2 rounds of the NCAA tourny. So yesterday after my two morning classes and a not so brief faculty meeting, I bolted and headed to the Coliseum. We got there right at half time of the first game (LSU vs Butler) and saw a second half great game. I was cheering for LSU since I had picked them, but it seemed the entire stadium was routing for Butler. Then the UNC game, in which we witness Psycho T break the ACC all time career points (which JJ Redick held...not a fan of by the way).

We took a break in between session and grabbed some chinese buffet before heading back to watch a decent Minnesota/Texas game. Minnesota definitely had the best pep band of the four games. And then the Duke game, which we only stayed through half time. By then, it was 11, I was so tired and my back hurt. The seats in the collisium are TERRIBLE. Really uncomfortable and hard as a rock! When we go back tomorrow, I am bring something to sit on for sure.

Probably did not help with my back problems, but I have visited the chiropractor 5 times so far and I must say, I haven't felt better in quite a while. Still a little bit of residual pain in places and sometime, but I have to say that it is working! I was going to run the 5K tomorrow morning, but since my back flared up, I took it really easy the past 2 weeks, only ran 2x this week and easy and on the treadmill to soften the impact.

Other random news...I went and heard Thomas Friedman speak Wed night at HPU. Our president was/is a big business person who knows a lot of people and brought him in (did I mention our graduation speaker this year is Buzz Aldrin). I heard Friedman speak on the Colbert Report (or maybe it was the Daily Show) a few months ago, but haven't read any of his book. He spoke for a little over an hour about his new book Hot, Flat and Crowded, and it was really interesting. Very good speaker and great presentation and information. Based on his talk, the book sounds really good.

Lets get ready for two more great bball games tomorrow!!