"Make a circle in the sand, make a halo with your hand, I'll make a place for you to land. The bus is running, it's time to leave. This summer's gone, and so are we. So come on baby, let's go shut it down..." ~counting crows

Tomorrow is the first day of school. I'm excited to meet my new kids. I'll probably have what is right now my only class (that's a big problem that I won't go into now) for most of the day, which means I need a lot of activities to keep them busy. For some reason, despite the fact that I haven't done much planning yet, I'm not that nervous. On the first day they're usually shy and quiet because they're nervous, so tomorrow I probably won't have to worry about behavior management too much. I just need to make sure I lay down the ground rules and expectations that will influence the rest of the school year.

Last year my birthday was the first day of school, and I remember going back to my apartment after school and planning like crazy because I used all of the plans I had already made on the first day. Here's my blog entry from my last birthday. It's interesting to go back and read it and see what I was thinking as I began my teaching career. I guess I'm slightly more jaded this year, but I'm still optimistic. I'm more aware of how challenging it will be but I'm up to the challenge.

Yesterday I went to see the Broadway musical [title of show]. I had some misgivings going into it (should they really be allowed to charge that much for a show with such a low production cost?), but I did enjoy it. I won the lottery for a cheap front row seat (which afforded me a perfect view); I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. It's a show for theatre-lovers, which is exactly what I am. Here's my favorite song from the show, A Way Back to Then. I saw Alice Ripley perform this song on Friday night and fell in love with it then. Heidi has a wonderful voice:

Towards the end of the show, Susan (one of the four actors) actually pointed at me, grinned at me, and sang directly to me. That made my day; it is so incredibly cool to connect with an actor onstage.