Letting It Out

I know the title of this blog is what I've chosen to name the blog but it's appropriate to what's going on. For those that actually read this from time to time, this may be the week to keep up. There is definitely, right now, a proverbial "cat" in a "bag" and it's about to be let out. I don't know how this is going to go. I'm anxious and a little intimidated. It's life-altering! I just hope that when it comes out, it doesn't completely tear down everything around. In fact, when this is let out, a lot of you will begin to understand a lot of the posts over the last 6 months.

Losing sucks!!!

So, at the request of a friend, I have decided to finally update my blog. It's not been easy to get on here because there's so much going on. As you can tell from the title of this blog, basketball has not been going so well. We actually won our first game and won it by 21 points. Since then, it's not been pleasant. Our closest game was this past Friday where we lost by a mere 24 points. In Delaware, girls sports in public schools are at a real disadvantage. I knew that when I started but I'm really starting to see now to what extent it is. Here, private schools rule most sports, especially the girls sports. Two public school teams have not met in the state championship for girls' basketball since 1977. The middle schools in our school district don't even have athletics. Even if they did, I'm not allowed to go talk to them about coming to play basketball at our high school. This is very backwards compared to Texas. On the other hand, the private schools get all their girls from the youth programs and all have middle school athletics. Not only are they not restricted as far as a school district, they can have students come to their school from other states (Some of these schools are mere minutes from New Jersey and Pennsylvania). The talent that doesn't come up through their programs, they give scholarships so that they eventually end up in their programs. In a public school, I don't even have a budget. Everything that I think we need, I have to fund-raise in order to get the money for it. It's definitely an uphill battle that I'm fighting. If I'm going to turn things around, it's going to take time and a lot of work outside the season to try and build a foundation in downtown Wilmington among the girls that don't have the same advantages that the rich girls have. Of course, the good ones will end up at the private schools anyway. The task is a little bit daunting. Maybe I'll go teach/coach in Pennsylvania.

SNOW!!!!!!!!

So, there's not a lot of things that are better about Delware compared to Texas. But, I do really like the weather here. My students were amazed when I told them last year that I thought it was the first time I could remember seeing actual snow more than twice in the same season. It has snowed three times in the last week here. Today, there was a light covering of snow in our backyard and on our cars when we woke up. It has pretty consistantly snowed all morning. The only problem today is that it's barely down to 32 degrees. So, the snow that was on the ground has already melted even though the snow keeps coming down. Oh well, the people around here are saying it's a sign that we're going to have a "heavy snow" year. It apparently hasn't done that for a few years so they feel we're due.

And the wall falls down

So, have you ever built a wall out of those little wooden ABC-blocks? It's not exactly sturdy. So, once you get it up to a certain height, it doesn't take more than a stiff breeze to knock it over. You get it to that point and you're watching to make sure nobody comes to close cause it took you so long to build it and don't want it to fall over. After a while, though, you start looking at the wall and you start thinking about what it would take to make it fall. You figure out that all it takes to destroy the whole thing is to disturb one little block and the whole thing comes crashing down. After that, you knock over the rest of it and have to start over again. Last night, I disturbed one of my blocks. It was careless and now I get to start all over.

25 hours

It's just 25 hours till my departure to the "Big Apple." I'm anxious with anticipation. More than anything, I'll be really glad to take a 4-day holiday from my students that doesn't involve teacher in-service. I'm looking forward to basketball and great Asian food. I'm looking forward to getting places without having to actually drive. I'm even looking forward to doing a substantial amount of people-watching on the subway. I'm hoping to even find a place to watch the big Anderson Silva, UFC fight on Friday night. Maybe I'll even go to a museum and take in a little culture.

New York City!

I am totally jazzed about going to New York City this weekend. I'm taking a sick day (cough, cough) off from school and leaving as soon as I get out on Thursday. I get to play a bunch of basketball and sleep late a couple of days and just walk around and be a tourist if I feel like it. I'm not even sure what all I'm going to do. I've got Thursday night and Friday morning all booked up. From there, as long as I can still walk after all the basektball, it's totally up in the air. There are a few things I'm wanting to see but I don't know if I'll be able to fit it all in. I have until Sunday so I'm hoping to get most of it in. I might try to see a Broadway show but I know those can be a little pricey so that may not happen. Anyway, I'm really excited!

Friendship

I was just thinking today about making friends. It seems like there's two general kinds of people when it comes to this. There are people who make lots of friends. Those tend to be the people that are really nice and outgoing. They may have a few really good friends but, in general, they have lots of people that they communicate with on a regular basis or hang out with or something like that. Then there are the people who don't really go out looking for friends. They tend to have just a few really good friends and everyone else is more like an aquaintance they speak to when they are around them. I'm more like the latter of the two. I have a handful of what I call best friends that are actually more like my brothers. I talk to people at work when I'm at work but not really outside of work. I don't really know a whole lot of people outside of these few friends and the people I work with. It's been a little hard for me here, in Delware because it's the first place I've ever lived that I didn't have friends around that I could just call and go hang out with. I'm going to have to work on that.