It's been a week since I started thinking about writing this blog, it's time to actually write it! haha...

Things have changed drastically within the last week and a half. School has been increasingly stressful with a new group of students and with my Teach's new full-time job on top of this one, it's becoming difficult for her to keep everything together as well as she has been. I help her a LOT while finishing my own work. I'm officially done with 1 of the 3 parts of the curriculum. (They being spelling/terminology, lecture and lab. I'm done with spelling/terminology) I just need to take the final consisting of 50 terms and I'll have that taken care of. I need 3 more lecture tests done and I'm caught up with everything but I'm overloaded with labs to do. With me training new kids it's hard for me to do the other time consuming tasks but I'm going to do them and I WILL finish by April hopefully! My goal of March is not looking possible but I'd rather do everything right than fast.

Last Wednesday I got a call from the Montebello School District interested in hiring me for a position but it required a bilingual employee. I told them I'm not proficient and they said they'd call me back to see if I still fit the bill. No call back that day so I dismissed it. They did call me Thursday and asked me, "Would you like to start working tomorrow?" Turns out they are in desperate need of office assistants and while they wait for another employee's fingerprints to clear, my non-bilingual would do! Full time Mon-Fri at $12.80/hr, short term probably until March or April. I was excited and nervous and I was amazed at how fast everything was happening but I was completely happy about this opportunity! My family, friends, and teacher are very happy for me!

My first day of work went great! I work in the Parent Involvement department of the district where I do a lot of clerical work and help out with the translation equipment. (They have machines they give to the Spanish speaking parents that have headphones and a translator speak into a microphone so they could hear whatever meeting that is said in English translated into Spanish.) I found out if I knew Spanish I would have had the translation job primarily. The meetings are very informative and my coworkers are great! There's Lucy and Ele who translate and do a lot of paper work which I also help with. (I had to transcribe some meeting minutes in Spanish, was frustrating but I learned a LOT!) Then there's Dr. Franco, the boss. He's a happy guy, really easy to get along with. I'm going to be helping him at an elementary school part-time 3 days a week in the front office and at the nurses office! YAY! KIDS! :D

The first meeting I went to I was not introduced and a board member thought I was Ele's daughter! It was hilarious! The job is very easy and I'm having a blast, I've always wanted an office job! While I am happy with this job and would like to keep it, I know I'm being called to do something else but am enjoying myself immensely in the time being. The only thing I do not enjoy about the job is the traffic. It's close by my house and very close to my grandmother's house! But the 3 freeways that I can take are constantly jam-packed after I get out of work so I take the streets.

Saul and I have been talking a LOT thanks to the phone line being opened now and I'm very happy about this except for when I started working. I hadn't been able to get in touch with him and everytime he called I wasn't able to talk because I was at work. When I finally did get in touch with him he was extreamly detatched and wasn't really excited about my job, just irritated that I wasn't answering my phone. That upset me and the next few days led up to a lot of arguing and hurt but we did get to the core of the problem; he's sick of the place he's in (obviously) and he was forgetting a lot of things he told people so it was frustrating him. It was a very big rough patch for us but we are persistant in staying together and not letting this situation get the best of us because things are going to be different when he comes home and that I'm looking forward to. 4 more months <3

Speaking of some of my favorite men, Tonzy called me out of the blue when I was out to dinner with my friend Adrian! This was amazing because I had just come from visiting his family to sign a card to give to Tonzy for his birthday! I love his family, they're all characters and they're terrific to hang out with! His sisters are growing up so fast, it's such a shock to see how much they've grown in a few short months! Talking to Tonzy gave me some insight on his journey and his mindset, he's still going through a lot of healing and soul-searching and I'm glad God is showing him the path to what he needs to do every step of the way. He's coming back around Anime Expo time so I'm looking forward to going with him if we can! I miss my best friend, we need to be nerd with each other!!!

Speaking of NERDS...buahha last night was the Kawaii Morning Valentine's Day potluck night. It was so much fun! In attendance was Bryan, Cyrene, Danielle, Keil, Sierra, and Tako. I was having the worst time finishing everything on time and the dish I was attempting to make turned out horribly and I almost didn't want to go but I did cos I wanted to see my friends. We exchanged Valentines and I gave flowers to the ladies of the house, boutonnieres to the men. We ate very well, talked, laughed. We played a game called Things which is sort of like Apple to Apples, sooo much fun to play! I hadn't seen everyone since New Year's so I was totally happy to come out and see them again. I had the opportunity to talk to Tak for a while, I haven't talked to him quite a while, I miss being able to hang out with him. Opportunity may be calling him elsewhere, whatever happens I'm sure we'll persevere, he's very good at that! :) I was going to go to Little Tokyo for Lunar New Year but I came home very late and was starting to feel run down. I didn't want to get sick again so I stayed home even though I'd been looking forward to Lunar New Year at Little Tokyo :'(

This is the Valentine card Cyrene made for me, she makes the most interesting cut-out cards! <3 Pilze from Neurotically Yours!

Miss Danielle also gave me a lovely little stocking with my gift from Christmas which was a little Lucky Cat charm with a bell! It's on my purse with my other Japanese things! :D

So that has been my life for the past few weeks, so very busy and fullfilling! ^.^ I wouldn't have it any other way, I'm very happy with my life right now. Lent is coming up which I'm looking forward to, I'm going to be giving up using my credit card (save from automatic payments or extreme emergencies) and am also thinking of giving up red meat. Those are big sacrifices for me! I'm always changing, evolving, growing and I've been doing a lot of that lately. I have a lot to look forward to and am ready to take everything in! :D

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dirt; dirt; dirt; mud