Last weekend, our dear friend Paul, from MSU came to visit us! He lives/works his life away in Houston as an accountant, and he was "out this way" (I use this term loosely...) last weekend so he drove over to visit! It is always so great to have people come to town; brings a little bit of familiarity to us! We did the weekend right and chilled in style...we stayed up way too late talking, went to see a movie, and gave ole Pauli the grand tour of El Paso/Juarez/Ft. Bliss. There is a point on the interstate where you see the fence and directly into Juarez. And the unimpressive Rio Grande...it's been dammed up further upstream, so our version of the Rio Grande is pretty wimpy.
Us & Paul at the wedding; aka, best groomsman ever! Actually, we had an amazing wedding party overall, but Paul went above and beyond to be sure we were hydrated* and well taken care of. (*Well, I wanted water...Brian wanted beer-haha!)
We're planning a big 4th of July trip out to his parents house in Phoenix, AZ! I'm pumped--not only do I get to see lots of friends, we're also (hopefully) going to the Grand Canyon!
We dropped Paul off at the airport Sunday evening and headed back into daily life as we know it. Brian had just gotten back from New Mexico that weekend from a weeklong training event (which he says went well!), so he was a little pooped! I subbed twice last week, and my oh my, did I have some experiences! In addition to my interesting conversations with middle schoolers (see previous post...), I also got the immense privilege of going to a pep rally. The kids had just finished taking their TAKS tests, which are basically Texas' version of state testing. To celebrate great attendance and being done, they threw the kids a pep rally where 2 guys came and rapped. Seriously. They apparently are a big name around town; they have some songs on the radio, but the principal explained that they couldn't sing them at the pep rally due to "inappropriate lyrics". You knew this was going to be good after that announcement. Well then, to every educator's horror, they asked all the kids to come down to the floor of the gym...this is a teacher's nightmare. I foresaw mass chaos. But to give the kiddos credit, they actually behaved really well and no one got too crazy! Thankfully it ended soon and the crowds cleared out to the buses.
Friday I subbed in the high school. They apparently had a lot of teachers absent, so I found myself subbing for 4 different classes that day...it was crazy! And to make it even better....you guessed it: we had a pep rally. But this pep rally was more of what I recall from high school...they were recognizing all of the winter/spring sports teams. Which means it was pretty boring, but at least it was predictable. They had it outside in their stadium, which was nice, but it was quite warm! On the news last night I heard we have had 96 continuous days of sunshine here! Which also explains why we're under an "extreme wildfire warning".
In other exciting El Paso news, Obama was in town today! As well as a wild mountain lion roaming freely in downtown El Paso. No joke. It apparently ran through a playground full of kids too...Crazy, right? This makes me a little frightened considering we went hiking this weekend...and we live at the base of a mountain. Perhaps I should buy some mountain lion mace...
Well that is all for now; more to come on our hiking trip to Hueco Tanks which was AWESOME!
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