First off, there's no other place to begin: Anna, I'm so sorry for your loss. It must be hard to lose someone who was such an amazing person and so close to you. Let us know if there's anything we can do.
Jordan sounds beyond amazing. I can't wait to hear more Arabic skills in the spring - maybe some Coolidge 101 casual lessons as well? Also, I recognize Petra - did you find the Holy Grail while you were there?
As for Jenna, I look forward to hearing even more French than usual upon our return :) And Karen, I'm jealous - our equivalent of fireworks was the A/V folks put up a video on the quad. It was lame...
And Schmickers! I'm so glad your buds caught on to the Black Hawk Down reference. Also, just know that your description of touring old stomping grounds on the strip had me imagining you rolling around Vegas making it rain at various card tables. Whether or not that was true, I will assume that is what transpired. You can do little to persuade me otherwise.
Sooo New Haven.
This job is awesome. IT has calmed down to the point where we just do fun stuff - remote controlling people's computers to install and repair (or just to mess with them) and administering the server to help instructors.
Class is the big part of my day. For 70 minutes Monday thru Friday, I teach. It's just me and sixteen high schoolers, some of whom are more excited about computer programming than others. I have about half a dozen computer nerds in the bunch, but the others are less stereotypical and it's everyone's first time programming.
That's the great part: I've managed to get almost all of them excited about programming, and everybody has learned something. We've covered animation, loops, graphics and graphical interfaces, and more. Yesterday, we "started" our own software giant; the whole class divided into groups and designed the menus/looks of all our new programs, then we reconvened and discussed the pros/cons of our design choices.
We also took a few minutes out of class this morning to watch the Atlantis lift off. It provided a nice moment to remind these kids, who have knowledge thrown at them all year and all summer, that the picture is a little bit bigger than the grades we get or the assignments demanded of us. After all, the Atlantis does run on computers :)
Last weekend I went to Boston with about 50 students in tow. We saw Blue Man Group, toured Fenway, and went on a Duck tour which was all fun. This weekend I'm assigned to the whitewater rafting trip so I'm super excited.
So that's all there is from me. No international expeditions of cultural immersion - it's just me, sixteen kids, and a whole bunch of computers. It's tiring, but it's an insane amount of fun.
-Dylan
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