New Beginnings

I've always felt like the new year starts in the fall, not in January. Probably that's because I'm a teacher and in North America at least, that's when school starts. This year there are lots of new beginnings in my life.

The first new thing was flying out to Ottawa and getting Rose set up to go to university there. It was hard to leave her there, but I can trust in God that he's in control, as always, and will watch over her and keep her safe. I skype or IM with her nearly everyday, which helps.

The second new beginning was when my boarder arrived. Last year I had a 15 year old girl; this year I have a 17 year old boy. These are students from Queen City Collegiate (which is on the same campus as Western); and are from China. I think this year will work out better, as he's the same age as Bram and they get along very well. In addition, he's pretty outgoing. He came to church with Bram and I on Sunday, and is consciously making an effort to practice learning English. Leo arrived Saturday morning.

Bram arrived back for school Saturday night. I'm wanting to get him moved into Rose's old room, as it's larger and has a built-in desk, but I've been so busy working on one of my suites, trying to get it ready to be rented for the first of September, that I haven't had much of a chance to help him get settled into a different room.

School was the last new beginning. We started on Monday with registration and orientation. I'll be teaching the remedial math again, as well as helping with the French Immersion classes on Mondays and Fridays. I'm teaching Information Processing again (a fancy name for computer class). I was supposed to be teaching accounting as well, but I don't think anyone signed up for it. Oh well, I'm doing a lot more of the planning for one of the French Immersion classes, so I'll keep busy regardless.

Today was the first day of classes, which, as a librarian is a really busy day, getting textbooks signed out to students. However, the library software wasn't working, which made my life pretty challenging. The tecchie guy arrived at the end of classes and worked for over an hour on it, which meant that he was finally able to get a work-around for me so I can do my job. It's still not working entirely right, but at least I can access the program. The air conditioning isn't working in the library and it was 27 in there at the start of the day; then it started heating up. I'm glad I've at least got a fan to sit in front of.

This morning I got up before 5, as I was at the apartment by 5 am, painting walls. We finished up tonight. Bram and Leo came over and helped put the metal thinggies back in the registers. I'd taken them out to paint them. They also put the cover plates back on the switches and plug-ins, and helped clean up and take out the garbage. Loopie and Bayley also came over. Loopie scraped windows for me so I could paint them. She also loaned me her shop vac and vacuumed up things for me. I'm now done over there, except I need to have the new blinds I purchased hung (where's my brother-in-law?); and I need to steam clean the carpets tomorrow. I've been working on this apartment for two full weeks (it was incredibly filthy) and I'm ready to be finished. I've got renters for it already without advertising - they're related to the renters I have downstairs. It's 10 pm now and I think I need to go to bed.