I feel pretty…

Yes, that’s me. Holy shit.

I never thought I would honestly think that I looked beautiful. but in these two pictures (and for the entirety of the wedding we went to) I did. I got so many compliments on my dress and my stockings, that it was as if I were a member of the bridal party!!!! My wife also looked beautiful, and actually danced one dance with me.

I just wanted to share these pictures with you, because I have never felt so beautiful before.

Love and hugs,

Chaya bat Maria

2015 Resolution

For this year, rather than a simple resolution that is easy to break, I have set for myself a challenge.

I will record one affirmation or positive thought about myself and put it on the Affirmations page here.

It doesn’t really matter if people look at them every day, but some of you helping to keep me accountable would be helpful.

Oh yeah, I also am not allowed to simply repeat the affirmation from the day before, and I will try to come up with something original each day. I don’t usually think positive about myself, so this is going to be difficult for me.

Love and light
Chaya bat Maria

Another weekend

Hello my lovelies,

For those of you who do not know, I teach Hebrew school on Sunday mornings. My class are seventh graders, a mix of both boys and girls (though mostly only the girls show up). Ours is a reform synagogue whose entire seventh grade class is focused on learning about the Holocaust.f

November 2nd’s class went fantastic. Absolutely wonderful. The kids loved my powerpoint presentation, and were very interested in the subject… This week was the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, November 9th. The events of 9 November 1938 are crucial for Jewish understanding of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, so we had a special service for the children at the beginning of the day to commemorate this event. The service and ceremony went wonderful, all of the kids from my class volunteered to read without any hesitation, the kids from the other class not so much. *puffs out chest like a proud momma bird*

Just before the ceremony, I find out that my assistant teacher has been tapped to leave our class for part of the day to go teach the fifth graders since their teacher had food poisoning. UGH!

So we did her part of the class immediately after the service, and of course that went very well. Then it was my turn. We had a lesson on the indoctrination of youth under National Socialism in Germany, for which I had prepared an absolutely fabulous presentation, which was still on my laptop and not on my ipad (of course). So I hooked the laptop up to the projector, and it wouldn’t work. The laptop did not recognize that an external display had been connected. I think there was a problem with the thunderbolt adapter. But I started to freak out.

I texted the assistant principal and asked for her portable wifi hotspot to be brought up to my room so that I could email myself the presentation to my ipad. Email sent fine… ipad didn’t download the presentation. So I start to freak out more.

I figure maybe it sent in .pages (which won’t email through typical channels) so I resend the email in .pptx… ipad still won’t download it. The wifi isn’t strong enough for it to pull down a 6mb file from email server. OMG!

After an hour of fidgeting and fumbling trying to get this stupid f***ing powerpoint to download to my ipad, i get the genius idea of downloading it to my phone. Which, of course, works without an issue… yay LTE coverage on the top level of a building.

While I have been trying to download and get this powerpoint going, I have lost the attention of my 13 year old students. UGH! So I try to reel them back in with discussion about the book we just finished reading, etc.

I look at the clock. I only have 30 minutes left for my 1.5 hour presentation. F***! So I have to rush through my presentation, which I had timed with Ishti at around an hour. Needless to say I have to gloss over several of the important facts that I wanted to discuss. I felt like such a total failure as a teacher by the end of it.

BUT: My kids were still able to answer the takeaway that I really wanted them to be able to answer: What makes the Hitler Youth different from BS/GSoA?

So I guess in the end that’s what matters. That the kids can recognize that indoctrination is subtle and they must question what they are being taught.

So here’s a question for you lovely readers: Do you want to hear about my classes, or should I keep them for a different blog or just not write about them? Please respond to this and let me know what you think!

Peace and Hugs,
Chaya bat Maria