Well this has been a pretty good week.  I got all my clearances I need to be employed by the school district, applied to Reading School District for their education assistant positions on Wednesday and they called me to schedule an interview on Friday.  It should be full-time, according to the ones that are listed on their website, which is awesome because I had called the district before I applied and I was told that the full-time assistants do get benefits.  And talking to a teacher from church who teaches in this district, she said that their benefits are really good.  This is pretty much an urban district, and I have been warned that it's not the easiest district to teach in, but if you stay with it a year or two, you become very employable by other districts if you want to leave.  So, my interview is on Wednesday at 11:40 Eastern Time.  It won't be much money, but it will be enough for now, and depending on what kind of students I will be working with, I think I will enjoy it because I loved being the teacher assistant in Anchorage.  I am still working toward my certification though.  I even bought a book yesterday (after spending almost 5 hours at Barnes and Noble) called "Your First Year as a High School Teacher" because it has a lot of good information, and reminders for me about how to set up your classroom, organization ideas, how to set up rules, and lessons, etc.  All of these things will be helpful for me if/whenever I go back to teaching.  It also is helping me get excited about teaching again.  I have really learned from my first two experiences in middle school and high school and feel like I'm ready and in a better place that I could succeed if I tried again. (Third time's a charm, right?)  I have much more realistic expectations of my student's behavior, and I know now how important it is to be firm and consistent from the beginning because you easily lose control if you make empty threats and don't have any consequences to go with them.
Today we had our first rehearsal with the youth/adult contemporary praise band.  With the exception of the drummers not always keeping the tempo steady and not knowing how to end the songs, it went pretty well! :-)  Tonight is our big "kick off" night for youth group at someone's house and Tim's going to just have the kids fill out info cards and we're going to eat and play games.  Hopefully the play-off game won't keep kids from showing up.  The Eagles play two hours before it starts.
We also went to the young adult Bible study on Friday night.  The leader, Dan, was telling us about a leap of faith he's making this coming week.  He's quitting his job for another job that pays half as much as he's making now.  He said that they guys he works with now are not Christians and not good influences, and the guy he's going to work for is a good Christian man, and it's just a better environment.  And what struck me most is that he said he was inspired by Tim and me to do it!  Because of the sacrifice we've made to come here, it helped him to make this decision.  Wow!  I inspired someone??  Who'da thunk it!  :-)  I'm just glad God can work like that.  Use a decision we made as an encouragement to someone else.  I know it was a leap of faith for us to come here, take the pay cut, and trust that we would survive, but it didn't feel too difficult because I wanted to come, and the people have made us feel so welcome, it's been a blessing!!
I hope everyone has a great week!