The Living Planet Aquarium

I only have 3 weeks left in Utah (yikes!) I have a Bucket List of things I'd like to do. So far I've only done 5 of the 30 things I'd like to do. The Aquarium was one of them. I went yesterday with my sis and bro-in-law. It's pretty small but they also have pretty cool things to see. I liked the jelly fish, octupus, sting rays (I pet them! Yes, I am like a child at the petting zoo.....no shame), seahorses, sea turtles, sharks, penguins, caiman, electric fish, piranha, anaconda, four-eyed fish....Ok, I liked it ALL, besides the nasty giant spiders and cockroaches of course. There was an exhibit called Animal Superheroes where there were various animals/insects on display with "superpowers." It was crazy the things some of them could do. Basically, if you haven't been yet, you need to go! You'll love it!

Our favorite photo op:

MEH-hee-ko

That would be the correct Spanish pronunciation of Mexico, where I just spent a blissful week on the beach under the warm sun and in the refreshing ocean water. We (our group of 15) stayed in Playa del Carmen, about an hour south of Cancun. I went here last year, but it was just as fun to come back. Almost half of the group had never been to Mexico before, let alone outside of the country so it was super fun for me to show everyone the ropes. Plus I got to use my Spanish muchisimo, especially since only one other person spoke it. That was probably my favorite part. I love talking with the Mexicans and joking around with them. Plus I love bargaining. One chavo called me a "buena compradora." He was very impressed with my skills. There was no ripping me off!

We pretty much did the same things as last time: visited Chichen Itza, jumped off cliffs in a cenote (underground lake), ate my most favorite meal EVER in Valladolid, went to church (I bore my testimony in Spanish, thank you), had a rooftop BBQ, went snorkeling at Akumal, visited Tulum, ate delicious authentic Mexican food, shopped, and chilled on the beach - got lots more of it this time around. I had (yes HAD. This Utah weather is killing me!) a super sweet tan. I was pretty much the only one that left Mexico without getting fried to a crisp. I won't narrate too much (if you want more details, read my post from last year), but here are a few pics. Notice all the bright colors - I love it.

Just Married

April Fool's! So I'm walking by the math teacher in the hall towards the end of the day and he says, "Congratulations!" I'm thinking, "what the heck is he talking about?" "For what?" I say. "For getting married!" Oh, right. Of course. Guess I forgot to mention this small detail to you, my faithful blog readers. Next question for the math teacher, "Wait. How'd you know....?" Ha, just kidding. Apparently my car told him the big news. I went out to take a gander and this is what I found........

Apparently some of my students thought it would be a good April Fool's trick. Well, they were right. All I could do was laugh. To be honest, probably something I would have done when I was in high school. Most of the oreos attached to my car had been eaten by other students (are you serious?!) by the time I took the picture. My bike rack was also engulfed in toilet paper - took it off before I took the picture. They got me GOOD! Funny thing is early in one of my classes, we were giving presentations and for one of them a student said he needed my help. Well, he proceeded to get on one knee and propose to me as his April Fool's trick.

Shoot. I was trying to come up with a trick to play on my students for like a week, couldn't think of anything good so I gave up. And this is what I got.

Sweet Revenge: Notice the cans of root beer tied to my bumper. I plotted with my headmaster (aka principal) to get my students back. They were both Seniors. He readily agreed and asked, "How far can I push it?" I said, "as far as you can!" He seemed to like that response. He pulled them both into his office, set the cans of root beer on the table and said, "Can you explain this?" He threatened them with not being able to graduate and even went so far as to say I was going to press charges. Oh MAN!! I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one. They were scared out of their minds. We laugh about it now. They had it coming!

Last season coaching basketball....

Coaching has been one of my favorite aspects of teaching high school. This was my third season coaching at Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy. I'll give you a brief recap of each season.

First Season 2008 - 2009
This was my first year coaching. How did I become the girls' basketball coach? The Athletic Director came to me at the start of the year and said, "You're tall. Do you play basketball?" After my emphatic "yes!" he asked if I wanted to coach. It's always been my dream to coach high school basketball so I immediately accepted. Maeser Prep is a charter school so this season we played in the charter school league with 6 different teams. We did pretty well, considering my girls didn't even know how to jump stop let alone dribble or shoot. I mean they looked like 3rd graders learning how to play the game. We drilled fundamentals over and over in practice. By the end of the season they actually looked like a basketball team. They made HUGE improvement. I wish I had the film to prove it. Our win/loss record was 8/4 for the season and 10/6 including tournament. We ended up with 3rd place. Not too bad. Our first game in the tournament was against Paradigm High School. Going in to the tourney we had each won twice against each other. This was it, the tie breaker. Well, we ended up losing by 2 points in DOUBLE overtime. It was a really good game, one of the best I've coached. Because the tourney was double elimination, we won our next two and then we met up with Paradigm again in the semi-finals. Unfortunately we lost to them again. They were our best competition. This was a challenging year with teaching the girls the fundamentals and practicing at the American Fork Armory. It's HARD not having your own gym. But it turned out well!

Second Season 2009 - 2010
This year, Maeser Prep left the charter school league and stepped up into the big leagues. We officially because part of the Utah High School Activities Association as a 2A school. It was a good move to become more officially recognized in the sports world, but also knowing that we were going to get crushed by public schools who have been playing for years and years with great sports programs was a little daunting.

I started the year out coaching the volleyball team. The biggest challenges I dealt with were teaching the girls how to serve overhand (the coach before me didn't teach this) and teaching them to get the ball, no matter what. They were a little timid and if the ball was in someone else's area, they wouldn't even worry about it or step in and take it. Even though we didn't win any games, we DID get to go to State (2A tournament) at UVU and our biggest accomplishment was our improvement on the court. We even had an Academic All-State.

Baksetball. Again, no gym this year. Because the American Fork Armory was undergoing rennovation, we traded off practicing at Pleasant Grove Jr. High and an elementary school out in Alpine - the court was crap. We'll take what we can get though. This year our basketball skills were much better and we had tremendous improvement, again. Our win/loss record shows otherwise, but building up a program takes time. Our Athletic Director failed to schedule any pre-season games for us and was thus replaced. I lost my best player (point guard and top scorer) to an ACL injury before our first game. That took her out for the rest of the season. She hasn't been the same since either. Although, we didn't make it to State, we did have an Academic All-State.

This year for both volleyball and basketball I coached the Freshmen and Varsity teams. I would have done JV as well, but the UHSAA didn't grant us permission for a JV team since we didn't yet have our own gym. This was the first year I actually had an assistant coach too.

Third Season 2010 - 2011
What a season! We finally put a few wins on the board! I stepped down as Head Coach this year due to time constraints with other responsibilities (applying to PA school and finishing up my Master's in Education). Thus I coached JV and assisted with both Varsity and Freshmen. We finally had 3 different coaches for the 3 teams. It made a world of difference too. The Varsity Head Coach is fabulous too. She played ball in college and has a lot to bring to the table. The JV team's win/loss record is a little better than Varsity's win/loss record. We came away with 4 or 5 wins. And you can see the schedule is much better stacked than last year's. I had to schedule all the pre-season games myself considering the situation last year. The best part of this season was that we FINALLY had our own gym! Fans actually showed up to cheer us on. This has been our best year yet. Yes, it's nice to win. Everybody wants to win. But this season we focused a lot more on individual focus and improvement. We really did have a successful season, but not based on our season record. We found something worthy to achieve for and achieve it we did. Each player made huge strides in their individual performance. Next year.....look out!

Our program is continuing to improve, slowly, but surely. In the next few years we will be competitive enough to finally give some of these teams a run for their money. I'm sad I will no longer be a part of it, but you better bet I'll still be supporting my team.

Here's my siblings and I after our last JV win of the season. They are all sportin' their Maeser gear to show their support. Good luck in the future Maeser!

Color Festival

Ok, so I've wanted to go to this religious festival of some sort at the Hindu Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork EVERY year, but it seems like I always have something going on or just never know when it's happening. So I finally went with some friends and it was a blast. We barely made it on time for the chalk throwing. It's insane let me tell you. Everyone said to keep your mouth closed and I'm like, well yeah of course. But when the time came, I was just yelling the whole time and the chalk just sailed on in. Delicious! The great thing about it is you can throw chalk at people you don't even know and not even feel guilty about it. Take that sucker!

We went early to hopefully avoid the crowd. Yeah, there was no way. There were so many people there. People were jamming out to the live music and even body surfing. Yep, I made it from the front all the way to the back surfing. I wish......

Anyway, it was a good time and glad I got to do it before leaving Utah (I have a very long bucket list of things to do before I leave. Maybe that will be my next series of posts....bucket list #1, #2, etc. I'm well on my way!)