"I've been away
Yeah, I've been travellin'
I've been lost
I fucked around..."
-Joel Plaskett

Better shit or get off the pot, eh? Abandon the blog or keep it going. I choose, for now, to keep it going. I just hope everyone else who's ever stopped by hasn't chosen "abandon" as their option.

Well... what's been going on? Lots! Let me attempt to get you up to speed.

May 31 - June 1
Went to a local Boy Scouts camp with grades 3-6 from our school. It was a pretty nice place. Two cabins, an eating/cooking cabin, woods, open area with a campfire spot, etc. It was a good time, expecially the campfire. And making the kids who wrote on their bunks with pen clean it off with sandpaper we bought down the road, while other kids played.

June 6 - 8
Grade 7/8 trip to Halifax. This was awesome. In no exact order:
went to Fort Beausejour and Citadel Hill, went to and into the Springhill coal mine, saw Spider-Man 3 in an IMAX theatre, went to Peggy's Cove and the Swiss Air monument, went paintballing, had an awesome tour of Halifax, went to the Discovery Centre, shopped... that kind of stuff. Awesome trip. Took many nice pics.

June 8 - 30
I don't know what all went on. It's kind of a blur! Lots of school stuff. Grade 8 grad (making a slide show and a movie for it), packing things, saying "see you" & going to see the new school (more on that later), going on our end-of-year school trip to town (swim and bowl), hearing reports on my uncle (one of my faves) who's in his final days with cancer, and I can't bring myself to visit, yard work, finally getting our 1st-place trivia winnings from the year (but in a post-dated cheque), spending too much money on summer projects (fixing a building, getting a new door, etc)... it's been busy, believe me!

July 1st
Went to see the fireworks in Ch'town and received a little religious booklet called "Colonel Sanders Begins a New Life".

So... about that "new school" stuff.
Before that very first event up there, I found out that some of the percentage of teaching position that our school lost would end up being me. I'd go from 100% to 60%, and I could get 80% if I taught 1-6 music every second afternoon, and 7-8 Health. Now, I love music, but when I subbed, elem. music is about the only thing... well, it was the only thing, that I said I'd never do to myself again. Painful. But, I had to do it. So, I took it.

On June 4th, the Monday before the trip, I had an interview for another school. It was a 1-year position, teaching all stuff that isn't my strength (LA, Math, SS, French), but it would give me my tenure... permanent status at 100%. I had to try for it. Well, long story short, and some funny stuff cut out, I found out that day that I got it. I was relieved about my future but sick about my present. How would I tell the kids? How would I tell the staff? "You seem anxious," Sheryll said the next day. When I told the principal she cried. She dropped the news on everyone by surprise (including me) during a recess break. She just came inside from her duty to do it! I couldn't tell the kids before the trip, but a parent chaperone asked me if I was going to be back next year during lunch one day. I couldn't lie. I had to tell her. She got some watery eyes, too.

So, when we got back, before the kids knew, the secretary threw my news into the bulletin. I didn't like it, but at least it forced me to go tell them before they read it. I went and told the 5-8 classes, and I was a bit watery-eyed myself this time. From then until the end of the year, kids'd ask why I had to go. I was honest, but it just doesn't sound like a good reason to a youngin' I suppose. It's tough when a little girl in grade three with blue eyes like Shrek's Puss looks up at you when you walk by in the hall and says, "Why do you have to go?" I think the best comment was from another boy in grade two. On the last day, he said, "Bye, Mr. McQuaid. See you in years!" in his little Elmer Fudd accent.

It was, and is, quite tough leaving my school. I've been there for almost 2.5 years. It's a wonderful community with kids that are, compared to other schools, idyllic. I wish I could just get to a school I like and stick there. Since I started out in the fall of '01, I've had a job at the Dept. of Ed., my old elem. school, VR, TC, SP, and now MS next year. I'm like the Littlest Hobo or Hank Williams. Anyway... I've been trying to play up the "not goodbye" angle to all my coworkers, a couple of whom (and there are only a few of us) were pretty teary when they gave me my card and present. if we just keep planning things for the future, it'll be like I'm not gone. I hope. It makes it easier right now, anyway. I'm glad about who is taking my time at the school, too; A friend who I got into the school to do some subbing. He'll fit in (he already does) really well. He'll be the token male, and has a diff. sense of humour, like me. In another way, I don't like it, though. I'm almost kind of jealous. It's like, I'm leaving, and he's taking my place, and taking my friends. But that ain't so. Then again, my carpool buddy (upon hearing he got the job) was on the phone to him to ask him about carpooling next year and to ask him and his gf over to her place sometime... while I was sitting right next to her! It was like I was already gone. I won't tell you how many times the secretary put her feet in her mouth that day and the next couple. At any rate, without going on and on, the point is that I had to leave and it's tough. Le sigh. (see, I'm practicing French already)

Anyway... I hope you'll all eventually come back and read me again.

As a gift to you (you loyal reader, you), as an introduction to you about the wonderful school community I had to leave, and as a plug for a member and former teacher of that community, who is also our province's current Poet Laureate, I give you a poem from Frank Ledwell's new book, The Taste of Water

Country School

The taste of water at our one-room school
was of Pine Brook that flowed
down under the Bay's thick ice,
our bucket lowered into a deeper hole
where smelts would later school
in their spring run, hauled up, carried up
the snowy bank into the porch to sit,
wooden-lid-covered, on its special ledge
among the coats and boots. I dippered up
my water with a small tin cup
that swung from a nail beside.
Unschooled about germs,
I drank; I tasted snow and arithmetic.