weekend with my best friend

  i swear the weekends go way too fast. the week begins tomorrow and i am already exhausted. saturday, sarah and i decided to hang out and declare it national margarita day since we missed it on monday. we both love margaritas and went to puerta vallarta in muncie. we ended up spending 4 hours there because thats how long it took us to finish these massive babies. that, and we just girl talked about everything in our lives. it was really fun! then we went back to her apt and watched stepbrothers. "why are you so sweaty? i was watching cops" - haha best line.
then we went to the herot where we ran into the one and only LYDIA!!! we literally screamed when we saw her. it was such a fun surprise. the rest of the night included drinks and music.we also got super lost on the way home. neither of us know muncie well and ended up driving in circles for about 40 min... a lot of good the GPS did us. ended with a sleepover and tons of laughs in the morning. lovely weekend.
<< classic picture right. sarah dipped me during a song. the camera really caught the action :)

today i spent the day watching the hockey game between usa and canada. to be honest i could care less what the outcome of the game was and i could care less about hockey in general. it makes me have motion sickness. i only watched it so i could sit by this boy i like. haha kinda a crappy sunday really... oh well. saturday made up for it. maybe this will be the week i will find out about china. it better be!!

dance marathon

today, the school i work for held a riley dance marathon! it was my first time ever being a part of one and it was a blast! try being in a gymnasium with hundreds of kids dancing to "who let the dogs out?", teaching 5 & 6 year olds to the macarena and cha cha slide, as well as hearing piercing screams whenever high school musical, jonas brothers or miley cyrus came on! hate it? i LOVED it. the kids were so fun. i danced for about 45 minutes. lets just say, im exhausted. most kids just run around trying to do flips, but some really know how to get down. haha the best quotes of the afternoon went like this:

• "Yeah, i can dance like Michael Jackson. But, he is dead now. I will just dance like his ghost"
• "I am so sweaty from dancing. I could fill a pool with it all. It's kinda gross."
• "I think I will take a rest from the dancing. These stuffed animals need my attention.
• "I am not dancing because i think i have this disease where you are sweating but you are really not." (that one was weird. i didnt know how to respond :)
• "Miss Inholt, you dance just like me?" I wasnt sure if that was a compliment.

Afterwards, we had an all school assembly. Our principal said if we raised over $1000 he would shave his head. We raised something like $1, 230.23! A bunch of teachers got a chance to shave his head. Good thing my name wasn't drawn! I would have been too scared. My kids wanted me to sooooo bad though!

In other news, i cut my hair. Its shorter, more stylish and more blonde. I wasnt sure about it at first, but it's growing on me. I will get used to it. I am sort of a plain jane so this cut is quite a change for me. Nothing else on the application yet. I'm so impatient that I am going crazy. Im trying not to think about it. I just wanna know. Not knowing is the worst!

what?

i am sitting in my office/building/portable/whatever today on my prep period, which i like to call my "sit around and stare at the wall" period. or "get online and use my password since everything is blocked" period.

since my last post, i am down to 3 items pending on my application. 7 completed. & its sat like that for 2 days now. come on! why so slow to check 3 scanned documents? who knows. my attempt at patience just crumbled. this very second. now that i can rant about it to the online world.

i tutored yesterday. madison and i. we had a great time! beginning with me catching two, asian, pre-teen, punk rockers slammed up against the wall making out in a tutoring room, in a library, in the kids section! talk about a... ummm... awkward moment and then followed by alot of "miss inholt, what were they doing? were they kissing? why were they kissing? is that allowed?" it was quite humorous. so, as we leave her mom was stuck at the hospital and her dad was still 45 min away? what do we do? we go downtown and have some hot chocolate together :) as we are walking out she says "miss inholt, you look like a fairy princess with those snow flakes in your hair" how precious is that? I was elated the rest of the evening. oh what a 6 year old can say to just melt your heart.

 the other night, i couldnt sleep. for some reason i got in my head, why did i name my blog becoming jami? well, i know, but do they know? as i turn twenty three and this new year is ahead of me, i am using this year to find out who i am.  the lifelong question. i want to find out what i am all about. what makes me tick? what are my passions? how far am i willing to go to pursue those passions? why do i act the way i do? why do i put up with certain things but not others? what is my sttylleeee? haha questions! i want to become someone for ME. not for anyone else. i want to be comfortable in my own skin. and i am doing just that. :) or trying to.

redundancy

yes, its another post about my china application. even though not a whole lot of people read this, maybe 2  (take that back, 3. thank you sarah for following my blog) that I know of, i enjoy posting because i can just let it all out. my excitement, my nervousness and my news.
today, as i was religiously checking the CIEE site again, like i do everyday at least 10 times a day on my application, i noticed a change. instead of 6 items pending, 4 items complete, the checklist had CHANGED to 5 items pending, 5 items complete!!! they had started to process my application. the other completed things (4 before) were just random PDF files i had to read to show that i read the application rules, submitted everything via email, etc etc. oh, and my resume was one of them as well. i was so excited to see that one of the items they had looked at was my recommendation letter from nancy boes!! it was such a great letter and i hope that ciee liked it as well... like me as well actually. i was so excited. i went on to tell one of my co-workers by babbling on ... "my checklist went from 0 6 4 to 0 5 5!!" not mentioning what those numbers meant. :) she asks "i presume thats a good thing?" hahah i forgot to add in my excitement that the numbers corresponded to 0- items left on the checklist to submit 5-items pending 5-items completed. i knew that dan knew what i meant by 0 5 5 so i assumed she knew. she was able to understand my excitement because she is waiting to hear back for a teaching fellowship so i was glad someone was there to be happy with me.
tonight i am not all that tired but i know i need to go to sleep. i have been sick and this whole staying up thing isn't going to help. i hope that tomorrow my checklist number changes again. :)

maybe i will live here? why am i such a nerd. i need to stop this nonsense looking up pictures. haha

oh by the way, the mini adventure i was looking for? found it. sarah, caryn, erin, lydia and myself are heading up to st. joseph mi in two weeks to see the water, explore the lighthouses, walk the icy piers, take pictures, and explore some pubs.

excellent :)

just a saturday

of course i am sick again. common cold with a hint of laryngitis i guess. i should probably have stayed in last night to get better but of course i didn't. i went downtown and had fun with some of my purdue pals spent entirely too much money and went to bed too late and woke up too early. oh well. i wouldn't change it :) i got to eat breakfast at ihop so i am a happy girl.
i wish i could nap. ever since i left purdue its like the nap gods are not on my side. what is with that? i just lay here and nothing... thats why i am blogging about nothing.
still nothing on the application. thats all thats going on in my life.

anyone wanna go on an adventure soon? louisville? cincinnati? chicago? lake michigan?
i need some type of adventure while i am waiting on finding out about my big one :)

waiting game

All materials in? check.
Emails all sent? check.
Fees? check
Accepted into the program??


thats all i am waiting for!! aahhh!! it said allow 1-2 weeks for my application to process. these 1-2 weeks better go by quickly because you all know i am very impatient. i have a good feeling. a great feeling actually. that, or it could be that its been a good night for team USA!! nice evening watching the olympics with dan.

first day of tutoring madison went really well. we had a fun time! her mom offered me a nanny job for the summer. madison and her two brothers, 5 and 4, travis and shawn. its a possibility, especially if i get paid more than my old navy job, then its a huge possibility.

tick tock tick tock... impatiently waiting.

another step

Both recommendation letters in! thank yooouuu judie! her computer CRASHED today and she STILL got my letter in. i have such great references :) i got my passport-style photos taken today and they will be scanned and sent tomorrow while I am at work. so. tomorrow. my application will be complete. it will be reviewed and then i will be emailed to set up a phone interview. oh maaannnn. that makes me nervous.
i also start my tutoring job with Madison tomorrow. i am tutoring a first grader once a week in reading and writing. she is such a fun girl! she has great parents as well. her little cousin was in my kindergarten class for student teaching. i will pick her up at her aunts house and we will be off to the library. i got her a bright pink bag from old navy to keep her stuff in :) she will be so pumped. i love it.

one step closer

One of my old professors from Purdue emailed me today to say she sent in my recommendation letter! It was so thoughtful and really nice. "Really nice" doesn't even explain it! I am so thankful to nancy for writing it! she was my favorite prof and i had her for 3 classes throughout the years. This all just brings me closer to getting my application turned in. I need my old student teaching supervisor to finish hers, get the passport pictures taken and thats left! (hurry judie, hurry :)

new blog.

my first try at blogging again. i had about 5 paragraphs, 5 pictures, and just a great post back into the blogging world and what happened of course, it all got deleted somehow.... makes wanna already delete this sucker.
but, since i have nothing else to do today, i will just post again, but not as detailed.
ugghh blogger, really?

so... this blog will be all about my life obviously and the one BIG thing on my mind, applying to teach in China. its all i think about. seriously, all. i drive myself CRAZY thinking about it. i applying with CIEE Teach in China. i have been searching for a long time for a perfect fit to teach over there and I have finally found it. i officially started the application process on feb. 8th and am about half way there. i still need 2 recommendation letters (which i already have 2 people who are doing it for me) and getting my passport pictures taken, scanned, and emailed to ciee. they are going all green with their application process - no snail mail! its all email which is so easy and time efficient. although i am so excited, i am also struggling with the idea "am i too excited too soon"? i haven't even been accepted yet! what if i don't get in? i mean, they have to accept me right? i have exactly what they are looking for and then some! (way to be humble, right?)

last night for valentines, dan & i went downtown and ate at the old spaghetti factory. the wait time: and hour and half? i don't think so. great thing we were over 21 and could sit upstairs in the bar! we found a great table and felt like VIP :) ordered drinks, appetizers and dinner (which we barely ate because we were so full already!). then, we ventured about a block over went to Olives, a martini bar. we sat up at the bar and i had 2 martinis (my fourth actually :) and he smoked a nice cigar. it was classy! it was so fun just to relax together, have great talks and laugh. of course, i talked about china and he was a great encouragement. thanks, dan :)

<< what a picture. haha all smoky in there, and it was the end of night.

martini number 3? >>

a  chocolate martini with a white chocolate

rimmed glass... talk about amazing!

so what have i done today:

• cleaned, kind of.
• looked at lonelyplanet.com about china - all the pictures and all the videos :)
• resurrected my blog life.

i hope you all have a happy valentines day - i have enjoyed mine just relaxing and eating my edible arrangement from this really great guy i know :) happy valentimes day!!!