I started summer school on July 10th and life has been crazy since then. I have been heading to Denton Mon-Thurs for 2 hours of Spanish while my Mom (and sometimes Dad) watch Brenden for me. I’ve also been taking an online class, nonfiction. During this time Patrick has been going to class on Monday and Wednesday evenings until 10:00 p.m.

Spanish has been fairly easy. I had four years of it in high school so most of it is coming back. My teacher is absolutely nuts, but she’s just trying to keep our attention. She brings crazy outfits and slips them on over her clothes mid-lesson. They often involve wigs, hats, and mustaches. She uses a hot pink fly swatter to point to the board. Our first class was set entirely to the tune of Deep in the Heart of Texas. She has so many different voices and will switch them on a whim. It’s nuts, and I usually have a headache when I leave, but I ‘ll never forget the class that’s for sure.

This nonfiction class has been quite the challenge though! I have had 8 books to read, with 500 word papers due on each. And then for my final project I had to pick 5 books I’d like to read in the future, research them and write an annotated bibiliography on them. All my written work was due August 3rd. And on the 4th, I went in and presented my annotated bibliography to the class. And you know how fond I am of standing in front of the class!

There were four core books assigned to us for this class and the one I enjoyed most was Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides. It’s about POWs from the Bataan Death March during WWII. It was amazing.

We also got to pick four books to read and for one of those I chose to reread Tuesay’s with Morrie. I forgot how much I enjoyed this book the first time. Without being preachy, Morrie reminds me of what should be important in life. I’ve always defined success as being happy and having at least one person that can say their life is better for having known you. And Morrie can say that. I think everyone needs someone like that in their life. The following are a few of my favorite quotes for the book.

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they are chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning in your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

“Wash yourself with emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, ‘All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.'”

It’s been really stressful to try to get all that reading and writing done and there were times that I didn’t think I was going to get it all done. So to have finished it all yesterday was such a relief. And then of course our teacher tells us that we shouldn’t have tried to read every word of the books, only skimmed them. Things that would have been helpful to know before! Oh well, now I feel a strong sense of accomplishment and I can focus on my last week of Spanish. But for now, I’m enjoying the feeling of having absolutely nothing I should be doing.