Oh, man. This past week was a bit of a beast. The first part of the week, I shadowed the other fifth grade teachers so that I could see different teaching styles and get ideas on how I needed to run lessons. That was extremely helpful! On Thursday, I jumped in with both feet. The students have given me a bit of push-back (testing the waters), but Friday seemed better than Thursday, so I hope the trend continues. 😉 The staff at the school is incredibly friendly, welcoming, and helpful. I feel very welcome! Paul has been a huge help (well, he always is, but this week, especially). Abigail was sick on Thursday (just a little cold that was gone by Friday) and he was able to take a sick day to stay home with her. He’s also helped out with meals and laundry and so much more. I really appreciate our relationship and how we work together towards a common goal as opposed to simply sticking to traditional gender-norm roles. Oh, and one fun thing he got to do on Friday: he took the day off and went out to a former colleague’s property to go hunting. His colleague was able to get a deer that was large enough to split the meat with us, so once it’s all processed, we’ll have almost 50 pounds of venison. Today was spent doing laundry, going grocery shopping, and running errands (Paul also installed a new fluorescent light in the garage so he has better lighting if he’s ever working in there). I’m looking forward to Sunday and getting to rest a bit before the chaos of Monday begins again.