The Fire

Last night Ty and I decided to drive home and spend the night. Ty had an interview in Eau Claire for a summer internship, so we thought we would save an hour by driving home. Around 8:30pm we were looking at the River Falls Journal news paper for a new apartment when we looked on the home page of their website and saw the picture below....

Ty said, " Hey isn't that our apartment building?" Sure enough, when we read the story it was our apartment building! We couldn't believe what we were seeing. It was quite the scare. We quickly called the apartment manager, and she told us that there had been a fire on the other side of the building (left in the picture ours is the balcony to the right of the blue awning)...she said that she didn't think there had been any smoke damage to our apartment, but we were still nervous. She couldn't give us much information at the time, so we just had to wait until the morning after Ty's interview to assess the damage. I couldn't sleep all night.

When morning finally came, we went to Ty's interview and then headed home. When we drove up to the building, all we could see was a huge black hole on the back side of the apartment building. It was nerve racking. We didn't have renter's insurance at the time (I know, I know...bad us). When we got to the parking lot and we could see cleaning crews already there trying to make it livable for the rest of the tenants. When we got to our hallway, there was no smoke damage . Then came the moment of truth, we opened our door to find that everything was OK and that there was no smoke damage. There was an odor of burnt plastic, but we were SO blessed not to have any damage! Praise God, we were safe and no one was hurt in the fire. There are many who did lose everything in the fire and our hearts go out to those people. We will be looking for ways to help those people out. If there is anything anyone else can do I will post on the blog. 

Spanish Phrase of the Day

Quien inició el fuego?

Translation: Who started the fire?

Posters and Papers and Presentations , Oh My!

Monday hit like a ton of bricks...I was so tired I just didn't want to roll out of bed. Mondays are always hard, but this one seemed harder for some reason. Yesterday was a very productive day. Ty was at the school so I was home cleaning and doing laundry. After dinner it was back to the books. This semester has been a busy one, but these next few weeks are going to be especially crazy. Ty's big mapping project poster is due in a week. He will be displaying it in the University Center too. That will be VERY cool. 

As for me, nothing is really new. I am just observing in the classroom, teaching Spanish to Kindergartners and writing lesson plans. In two weeks there will be presentations coming out my ears and papers galore, but for now its all the same. 

Ty has an interview tomorrow for a part-time internship with a company in Eau Claire that does GIS (for those who don't know that's a mapping software). Please pray that it all goes well. Back to work...See everyone this weekend!

Spanish Phrase of the Day

Este semestre cogemos el toro por los cuernos

Translation: This semester we take the bull by the horns

Friday, My Favorite!

Well, this has been a very busy week. We have been trying to get through lesson plans and mapping projects between observation hours and studying for tests. We did find a little time to squeeze in some fun.

Monday, we were all settled in to sleep when Ty had this idea for his project that would make it "better" so, at 11pm, we hopped out of bed and drove to Hudson where I studied and Ty did research until 2am. Surprisingly, we weren't too tired to go and try to recreate our first date on Tuesday (more to come).

I taught my lesson to Kindergartners again and they were actually listening to me this time. Then, I hurried back to campus to have my night class. When night class was over around 6:30pm we headed to the Cities to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of our first date. Depending on who you ask, it was either really terrible or really good. Since I am blogging, I will tell you why it was really good ;). We did get lost and we did have a difficult time finding parking, I will admit that was no fun. We did try to go to the restaurant where we had our first date, and were ignored by a waitress. BUT we found this cute place called the Loring Pasta Bar. Yes, the menu was more expensive than we expected, but I thought the authentic food was good (Ty was not as impressed). You could see the Kitchen from where we were sitting and there was a live band playing authentic Italian music while people were dancing. 

This is a picture from their website. I tired to take one, but it was just too dark.

Afterward, Ty suggested going to McDonalds for a McFlurry...I said, "After 3 years thats all I am worth? At least take me to Dairy Queen!" He ended up doing alright. We went to Coldstone on our way home. In MY opinion, I thought it was a unique way to celebrate our 3 year anniversary. We did learn one thing from this though, some good memories are just never meant to be recreated...

As for the rest of the week...it has not been nearly as eventful. Studying and working on mapping projects has been the focus. Well, I suppose I should study some of my Spanish Vocab before class at 3pm. We will miss seeing all of our Chippewa friends this week. It is getting to be CRUNCH time in the semester and we need to stay up here and focus for the next two weeks. 

Spanish Phrase of the Day

Una cabeza sin memoria es como una fortaleza sin guarnicion.

Translation: A head without a memory is like a fortress without an army  

 

A Special Day Tomorrow

DISCLAIMER: some parts of this post may be cheesy or corny...sorry in advance

So...this may seem weird or lame, I am not sure.  Tomorrow is a special day for Ty and I. When we first got married we hadn't had our 1 year dating anniversary yet (yes mom and dad...I can hear a quick wedding joke just writing this). We thought it would be fun to celebrate the 1 year mark of our relationship starting. Tomorrow it will be 3 years that we have been together. We were going to try and find a way to go out to dinner at the place we went on our first date (pictures to come). I have class so we won't be able to go tomorrow, but its a unique experience for us because we live so close to the cities where we went to a twins game and then walked around the Nicolette Mall with a group of friends. This has become "our special place" ever since. I guess do what you will with it, but we are excited...and in three months we will be celebrating 3 years being married (go ahead make the quick wedding jokes, I know you want to). 

As is obvious from my tan, this was not taken in April on our first date, but on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico...sadly we have no picture from our first date...if you were there (Heather, Kayla, Tanara) and have a pic we would love to have it. Spanish Phrase of the Day
Eres la luz de mi vida y no hay nadie para mí a parte de tú
Translation: You are the light of my life and there is no one for me but you