Daytona Beach

We decided to finally visit the beach after two weeks of me living here as an official Floridian resident.  The last couple weeks on my days off we were running errands to the DMV and to other places to make sure everything was set up correctly.  And it was not cheap! It cost me a good $450.00 to get new plates, driver's license, and title change to my car! WOW I am so poor on top of the gas and other moving expenses..But I am working as much as I can so hopefully I can get some money back into my account.

Anyways, we drove to the beach for low cost-relaxing day.  Neither Francisco or I had ever been to Daytona Beach, so that was our destination for the day.  Daytona Beach is about an hour drive from the apartment.  It was fairly busy for school to still be in session around here.  But we had a lot of fun.  Francisco drove, and we were able to park on the beach so we could have access to our car all day long.  We layed out and swam in the ocean for about 4-5 hours and then walked around the boardwalk.  The boardwalk was nothing special.  All the stores sold the same items for the same price just different store.  But it was still a different experience and got us out of the apartment for the day.

I however, got super super burnt.  The burn in Miami had nothing on Daytona.  I used SPF 50 every hour even though the directions said it was good for 80 minutes.  But I don't think the sunscreen worked.  It wasn't expired and I just bought it the week before, but something wasn't right with that bottle.  I was so burnt I couldn't sleep on my stomach or back for 4 days and I had to take advil for the pain of my shirt on my shoulders.  I am writing this post 3 weeks later and I still have some peeling.  It was a very horrible burn.  But the day was still fun even with the burn.

You really can't see the extent of my burn in this picture but I was VERY red.

Rewind

Hi, my name is Erin and I have a blog that I have neglected.  A quick summary of the last year: I have been non-stop busy.  Let's see...the last time I updated, I just finished my second semester in the Early Childhood Studies Program at NIU.  Since then I have completed two more VERY busy semesters.  Let me give a recap of the last couple semesters.

Fall 2013:
I moved in with a great friend, Tienique.  She is actually the girl I went to Miami with in the last post.  She was a wonderful roommate.  We didn't get to see each other much because this was her last semester before graduating and my last semester of course work.  We were busy! But I still loved sharing my home with her and I wish our 6 month lease didn't go by so fast but as life does it came and went.
My cohort and I took a full course load of classes including clinicals in a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade classroom on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  I had the amazing opportunity to work in a 2nd grade class.  The school was amazing! My teacher was amazing and the students were absolutely wonderful!  I fell in love with this age group.  They were so intrigued over everything you taught them.  I had a blast working there.  While I was also a full time student, I was trying to work full time.  Basically this equalled me having no life.  I don't think I was able to work a complete 40hours a week but I averaged at least 30 each week.  This was one of the toughest semesters for me trying to find time for everything.

Spring 2014:
If I thought last semester was busy, I didn't even have a clue of what I was about to get myself into for my final semester before graduating.  I was student teaching. The way my program works is that we are split 8 weeks in a preschool setting and 8 weeks in an elementary classroom.  In my first 8 weeks, I was placed in 2 different preschool classes AM and PM with two different teachers.  It was a very interesting setting but I fell in love with the kids and it was hard to say goodbye..but the drive was awful.  I was driving almost an hour and half both ways every day in the midst of a very horrible winter in IL.  My next 8 weeks I was a lot closer to home student teaching in a school about 10 minutes from my house. HOW LOVELY! I was in a classroom with 23 3rd graders.  These kids were just awesome and full of personality.  My teacher threw me in super fast but it gave me more experience and helped me warm up to the kids even faster.  I had a blast in both of my student teaching experiences and I miss all the kids I was able to teach for the last 16 weeks.  

But that leaves me here...Graduation.  After 5.5 years of college I finally saw the light and I graduated.  I received my B.S.ed with an emphasis in early childhood education.  I graduated summa cum laude in my class with means my overall program gpa was above 3.9/4.0 scale.  I am beyond thrilled with myself for finally completing my schooling, even if it took me a bit longer than my peers to finally figure out what I wanted to do.

These girls came out and celebrated my birthday

Courtney and I as Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 for Halloween for our 2nd grade classrooms

Learning how to make musical instruments out of recycled material

Tienique and I in our apartment on her graduation

My whole cohort. This was our last day of undergraduate class

My best friends at our graduation

Road trip!

So here I am..just graduated college and I'm moving to Florida!
We packed my car up every last inch! I'm not sure why but I forgot to take a picture of all my stuff but I'm not kidding you, my car was full!  The drive was long. It took us (Francisco and I) two days.  We left around 8am Tuesday morning and arrived at his apartment around 8pm Wednesday.  We did stop around midnight on Tuesday to stay at a hotel.  If I could of reclined my seat in my car we could of slept and took turns driving but it was a cramped car so it was very hard to get any shut eye.  I didn't take many pictures but I got one of the welcome center in Florida (we still had 4 more hours to drive once we got to this point).  It was funny I got a picture of the welcome sign and we stopped to go to the bathroom and 5 minutes later it was Florida raining.  And it was a nice down pour for about 10 minutes and the sun came out and we were back on the road.  I will never understand that rain.  But it was a pretty smooth drive.  And I am officially here!