All packed! And my car's trunk has been turned into an apartment on wheels with all the essentials as I travel around.

All my school stuff :)

Annnnnnd my household goods added to the school stuff.

Not bad for all my classroom supplies and library and also having reduced my household goods to 10 boxes or so. Right? right? right? right? 

Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed that I couldn't squeeze it down to like half of this. Oh well! 40 boxes isn't bad :)

And the HOUSE IS CLEAN! Phew! 

I just love the nice, orderly lines in the carpet that the vacuum cleaner leaves behind! 

And the way a clean bathroom sparkles! 

And the way the house smells like lemons! So fresh! So clean!

So today I locked the door and walked away... 

only to return when I'm loading it all onto the moving truck.

My darling little house! You've been simply charming to live in!

I am sad to leave you!

In other news, I now have a place to live in Washington now! Yay!!!! I'll be living in a girls house with 3 or 4 other girls. This is a leap of faith for me (but then, so is this whole trip!) since it is always a challenge living with other people who have different personalities and habits. Praying that I would be a sweet, kind, and understanding roommate to these girls!

I heard a song on the radio today and it really seemed to just fit my life at the moment. I thought I'd share. :)

Have a wonderful Lord's Day!

On the Road

I've just spent a good week with my parents and "little" bro (6' 3'' tall! Crazy kid. Who told him he could get this tall????)  We've  done some shopping, looked at phones, gone to Bible studies, planned the road trip to Washington, played some Mario Cart Wii, and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and satisfying rain. It has been time well-spent. 

Everything is so green after the nourishing sunshine and satisfying rain!

Tomorrow I head back to Indiana for two days. 

I need to pack up the little odds and ends that are left... you know those little things that don't fit logically into any box as you pack? Maybe a box's worth of stuff that I'll probably want when I start unpacking at the other end of the country but won't remember where I packed it because it isn't a very categorical object. I'm just glad I'm not a knick-knacky person. I wouldn't even begin to know how to pack all those little things! To each his own!

Then I'll need to slap some identifying labels on the boxes. Since my things are traveling via semi and I may very well be absent at either the pick up or the drop off point, we thought it would be a good idea to make it easy to see which boxes were mine.

Didn't my dad do a nice job? He loves making labels :)

Since the majority of my stuff is school stuff, dad even made little "school" labels to put on the boxes that need to be taken to the school. When the labels are all on the boxes I'll be moving all of the boxes to one point in the house so the rest of the house is completely empty and ready to be cleaned. 

Then comes Sunday. My last time to worship with my brothers and sisters at Grace Fellowship Church before Washington. All the remaining Sundays and Wednesdays I'll be out of town. And that afternoon I'll be visiting with a couple different families and starting the goodbyes.

Someone please remind me not to wear mascara on Sunday. 

Thank you in advance.

And then come Monday! Off to Ohio I go! I've packed up the clothes for traveling and Calvin's (ahem. That is my car's name. haha!) trunk has been transformed into a dresser and closet of sorts. Thank you Calvin, for being so flexible! 

The shoeboxes are working quite well as my substitute for dresser drawers! :)
Shirts in suitcase and shorts/pants in backpack.

So begins the next five and a half weeks of traveling! 

I covet your prayers for safety as I travel:

-for contentment with where God has me and what God has me doing. I know that I will probably tire of living out of a suitcase very quickly.

-that I would use the time during these next few weeks wisely 

-that I would seek to glorify God in all I do and seek to see His glory in all the new things I see and experience.

Q&A

There are so many questions about this move! It has all happened so quickly! Let me try to answer some of the most common questions about the upcoming move:

Q: Where in Washington state will you be?
A: A little north of Seattle

Q: How far are will you be from the West Coast?
A: Right around 3 hours away.

Q: How far from Canada will you be?
A: I'll be about 2 hours from the Canadian Border.

Q: When will you be moving?
A: I'm planning on moving at the end of July.

Q: Are you flying out there?
A: No, I'll be driving out with my family. We'll be turning it into a moving trip/family vacation of sorts.

Q: How are you getting everything out there?
A: A friend from church has a brother who drives a semi and he has agreed to let me put most of my stuff in the semi and he will drive it across the country for me. (Isn't God good? He provides!)

Q: Do you have a place to live?
A: Not yet! I'm looking around and trying to find a good living situation, preferably sharing the rent with someone else as it is very expensive to rent apartments out there. ($1,000 a month for a 1 bedroom or even a studio apartment!!! Craziness!) I'm excited to see how God provides!

Q: Is there a good church out there?
A: It appears that there are several good churches! I'm doing some research will have quite a bit of visiting around to do once I get out there.

Q: How do your parents feel about this move?
A: Well, I know they are very sad to see me going so far away. But they have been so supportive! Do you know, it is such a huge blessing to have godly parents who pray on behalf of their children and who know what it means to truly seek God's will in life! They have prayed for me and with me and have accepted that this appears to be God's will in my life. My mom is asking lots of good questions and giving lots of good ideas. Dad has gone into high gear and is doing lots of research on the area, moving options, and lots of other things. I'm praying for my parents... I know I can't even imagine how hard it is. But I so appreciate how supportive and helpful they have been with this all.

Q: Your family seems so close... how will this huge move effect your family relationships?
A: I have been blessed with an extremely close family. I love being able to talk with my family about just about anything. I'm planning on coming back and visiting in the summers and Christmas vacations. Plus, today's technology makes it so easy to stay in touch with e-mail, cell phones, Skype, and Facebook. It will be hard not to be right there while my little bro goes through the rest of high school or as my nieces and nephews continue to grow up. But I'm not about to let the relationships drop. It will take more work to stay in touch but my close relationships with my family provide the motivation.

Q: Is this just for this year? Or how long will you be in Washington?
A: However long the Lord has me there. I won't pretend to know the future. It could be just be for a short while or maybe the rest of my life. I don't know. I do know that I will not be going anywhere until the Lord has made it clear that I should. Will I ever come back to Indiana? I don't know... I just don't know. I guess we'll have to wait to see where "protinus" (forward) takes me!

" 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 

'Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you a hope and a future.' "

Jeremiah 29:11

So... what is a "Classical School" ???

"Wow, that's great! Where will you be teaching?"
"I'll be teaching at Providence Classical Christian School."
"Oh, wow!" *insert slight pause here* "What exactly does... 'classical' mean?"

Excellent question. I'm so glad you asked! :)
(Please bear with me as I try to explain it in the best way I know how. I have only just begun to be acquainted with the Classical model... in fact, I've only known of it for a little over three weeks! Refer to the websites at the bottom of this page to peruse through writings that expound upon Classical education much more thoroughly and eloquently than I'm about to do here.)

Classical education dates waaaaaay back to the medieval times. The focus was on training the mind through a process called the "Trivium" which could then be followed by the Quadrivium (but we're not going into that here). Each part of the Trivium directly correlates with the maturity of the brain during that part of the process and plays to the strengths of the young person in that stage. The three schools (or parts) in the Trivium are called the Grammar School, the Logic School, and the Rhetoric School.

The Grammar School is the first stage and is the initial years of schooling, typically grades 1 through 4. During this stage the mind is like a sponge and soaks up information very quickly. Students are highly interested in "knowing things" and it is easy for them to memorize. So the instruction in this stage plays on that strength and requires the students to memorize and learn and memorize and learn. The goal is to build a firm foundation by building a solid skeleton of information.
Students memorize their addition and subtraction, multiplication and division facts. They memorize the process for regrouping and the different shapes in geometry.
They work on memorizing the parts of speech, spelling words, and parts of a story, all while reading good, solid, classical literature. You know, the forgotten books like Little House on the Prairie or the Chronicles of Narnia.
In History they work on memorizing a basic timeline onto which they can quickly and easily attach other dates. Names and events are memorized and put into context on this timeline which they are building in their minds. Focus is put on primary sources and historical literature that exposes what actually happened.
In Science students memorize the basic parts of specimen and the vocabulary which will be so important for them to understand and use later during their education.

The next stage is the Logic stage. Students are ready for this stage at about age 11, around grade 4 or 5, and will continue in this stage until about age 14. You know how students this age are always asking, "Well, why is that like that?" or "How did that happen?" They are no longer satisfied with just knowing things. They want to know WHY the facts are that way. This stage allows students to explore the how's and why's of the facts. They are taught to analyze arguments and to create their own arguments for a point of view. They are also taught the causes and effects as well as how different areas relate to each other, (for example, how the Industrial Revolution effected the job market and thus economics, which includes math). They begin to understand that very few things can stand completely independent of other things. They are given exercises to draw connections between subjects and events, even when those connections may not be obvious.

Once they are able to analyze strong arguments and also create their own solid arguments they begin to ask, "How does this apply to me?" or "When am I ever going to need this in real life?" Why not let them answer those questions on their own? They are ready for the Rhetoric stage. They have been given the tools to learn: the basic foundation of knowledge and the ability to form and analyze arguments that support information. In the Rhetoric stage students are encouraged to begin exploring on their own using these tools. They begin to specialize in whatever branch of learning interests them most and are encouraged to have original opinions and draw well-informed conclusions. They are expected to voice their opinions in clear and elegant language and are expected to be able to back their opinions with solid evidence. Once they are able to do this they are ready to move onto the University (which is like the medieval Quadrivium).

I hope this helps you understand a little bit more of what it means for me to be teaching in a "Classical" school. I'm so excited to have an opportunity to teach in a school that is using a model that has stood the test of time and is focused on developing the mind, not just turning out high test scores.

Read the following sites to get a even clearer idea of what this Classical education is all about. :)

Dorothy Sayers' "The Lost Tools of Learning"
http://www.pccs.org/files/Store%20Downloads/The%20Lost%20Tools%20of%20Learning.pdf

The Well-Trained Mind: A Classical Education
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classical-education/

Compare and Contrast... but mostly contrast

Indiana and Washington.
Two very different states.

Indiana

Washington

I mean... check out the two different Skylines!

First, Seattle's skyline:

Impressive, huh?

Then we have Plymouth's skyline:

Okay, so maybe that's not REALLY  Plymouth's skyline. But in comparison, it kind of seems like it. (Confession: I couldn't find any pics of Plymouth's skyline. I guess it's not big enough to take a picture of.)


"Sooooooo," you may ask, "Why in the world ARE you moving across the country? Alone. By yourself. Without knowing anyone out there. When you're a small town girl and Seattle is a big city?"

Well, the job out there was just so tempting. And when it comes down to it, there was just a real, deep, true, comfortable peace about it. I think about the other places I could work, and while there isn't anything wrong about working in the other schools that I could have, there also wasn't peace about working in them. I won't pretend to know why or why not. All I know is that I (and many of you!) was praying that God would clearly lead me to where He wanted me to teach. He did. The timing, they way events "fell" into place, the peace he put in my heart, the freeing excitement of some of my co-workers... all helped to make the way clear to me.

The school that I will be working at is a Classical Christian School. And let me just say. Classical schooling is awesome. It makes so much sense and I am so excited to have been given the opportunity to TEACH, really teach! You're probably asking, "What is classical schooling?" I'll tell you more about that in another entry. But know this: It is a wonderfully logical and structured way of learning that builds upon itself as it progresses in difficulty.

Here's a link to the school if you're curious: Providence Classical Christian School
And if you can't wait until my next entry to find out what classical education is all about you follow this link to find out.

*NOTE: I didn't take these pictures. All credit for the excellent pictures goes to the photographers on Google images.*

Bridge Out

Non progredi est regredi. To not go forward is to go backwards.

Life brings all sorts of surprises. Kind of like when you're driving down the road and then BAM! all the sudden the bridge that was there suddenly isn't? Yeah. Bet you weren't expecting that!
And the thing is, you can't get across that way anymore. There is just no way... unless your car sprouts wings that is.
The bridge is gone.

Now you have a choice.
You can say, "Hey, the bridge is out. Guess the trip is over," and then turn around and go home.

OR

You can say, "Hmmmmm, well that was an unexpected obstacle. I guess I'm going to be going another way."

The difference is that one person goes forward and one does not. And the person who did NOT go forward ended up going backwards.

Well, I've encountered a missing bridge in my journey. I thought it was there. But it wasn't. I am determined to make the most of it and to go forward. That means that I will have to turn and go another way. It appears that the road is now leading me to Washington state. Really, not a place I'd thought I'd ever live.

Come along and see how things play out! I'd love the company! :) This is going to be quite the adventure! Who knows where this journey is going to take us!