whew

So it's been a long time since I've posted...sorry about that to anyone who might read this. I will get those Africa stats up sometime soon (but not today, I forgot to bring them with me). The exciting news about Africa is that I just received an email yesterday with flight information for me - Mar. 1 I fly to Chicago, London, Nairobi Kenya and Mar. 30 I fly home! So now comes the tough part - finding funds. It's amazing that it is so difficult to ask others for money...I guess probably because it takes a lot of humbling. As someone who generally likes to be pretty independent, I hate to write those letters asking for help! I am going to have to be dependent on God's provision of money for this adventure though and that means humbling myself enough to ask others! Besides that, anyone who might want to fund my trip and everyone who prays for my trip is actually taking part in the trip which is really cool. I guess the point of fellowship with other believers is that we stick together, help each other out, walk through life in support of each other... and that's pretty great!
On another note, the reason I have been posting so few and far between is that student teaching has gotten to the c-razy point! I have started the "full teach" part of the semester which means I plan, teach all day, design all lesson plans, grade all papers, etc. etc. and it is absolutely amazing how exhausted I am every day! I like it most of the time, like it a lot in fact, but still, this is really tough. On Saturday I took my 2 tests to become certified and I am praying that I passed! The science test (over chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, meteorology, cell biology, genetics, ecology, and science teaching methods) was REALLY HARD!!! and the teacher test was just weird... wow, I hope I passed, I do not want to do that again! All together almost 5 hours of testing, 220 questions (130 of which were science). I guess that's really just a warm-up for the GRE that I'll be taking in the spring sometime, but still, ay ay ay! Ha, at least it's over...