Saturday

I've been slacking on the blog posts lately, so I feel like I should sit down and write something, but I'm not sure what. What did I used to write about when I wrote more often? I'm not even sure, my life isn't really that exciting!

But in a effort to not be a blog slacker, here's an update. I've now been in school for almost a month. The classes aren't hard, but it's somewhat time consuming. Some days I'm really busy with school, other days not so much. I've scheduled it out so that there is always one day a week I don't have school work to do. That gives me a bit of balance in my life.

Part of this program I'm doing involves going to a meeting every Thursday night. The classes are online but we meet as a group every Thursday night for two hours to go over what we're learning. That is actually the part of this whole thing I was dreading the most. It's all the way across town, it's at night and I'm not a night person, it's a lot of group activities, and I hate group activities, we have to take turns teaching, and I despise speaking in front of big groups.

But oddly, it has become one of the things I like most about this program. The first week I went in there, I looked around and I felt like there was no one I could relate to. I don't know what made me feel that way, but it's just a really eclectic group full of lots of different types of people, and I was looking for someone like me and I didn't immediately see anyone I clicked with. I felt sort of out of my element and out of my comfort zone. Which, let's be honest doesn't take much, because my comfort zone is extremely small. But as I have gotten to know everyone over the weeks, I have found that they're all like me. Older students trying to go back to school while juggling family and other responsibilities. We're all trying to make changes, better our lives, reach goals. We're all nervous about standing in front of the class and teaching the group. We're all nervous about participating in the small group activities. We're all tying to fit this two hour class into our busy lives.

So over the weeks we've all started to bond. I love those people. I love hearing their stories, and I root for them to succeed. We have a few students in our class who are new to the country and don't speak very good English. People in our class have volunteered to be English speaking partners and give of their time every week to help those people practice their English. One woman was going to have to drop out because she didn't have a ride and we found her one so she can keep going. I still sometimes dread going all the way across town every Thursday night and giving up my evening to sit in class, but when I get there I'm happy and I'm among friends. I didn't expect that. To be honest, I was kind of determined to hate the Thursday night class, but I don't. I'm actually going to miss those people when this year is over. Which is pretty typical of me, I guess. I resist change, I hate new things, I take forever to warm up to new situations, but once I do I'm all in, and then I go through all the emotions again when I have to leave.

So overall school is going well. It has been a change, and I don't always love giving up my free time to do homework, but it feels good to work towards a goal and to finally be doing the thing I wished for all these years. I'm proud of myself for being brave and going for it, because being brave doesn't come easy to me.

So there it is, the update on my life. It's not exciting and adventure packed, but it's my life. And I kind of like it. :)