Ways to have fun in Houston Texas:

See if you can outrun a cockroach the size of your shoe as it races you back to your dorm.
See how long it takes to deshine your face when the humidity is sending all of your internal liquids out your pores.
Play air hockey with new friends so hard that you wake up and can barely move your arm.
Try to teach someone how to play pool and suck so bad yourself that you never get a ball in.
Watch teenagers buck and groove to that game where you have to move your feet to bad music in some mysterious pattern.
Play "Fotofind" using naked ladies and try to figure out the difference in their nipples. (Tip: often they are missing one).

This, and so much more, was the focus of my first night off as a teacher here in Houston. What I can say for certain about Houston (no offense to any Texans out there), is that if I had to live here...well, I wouldn't, that's all. The weather here is worse than bad- it's wretched. The humidity sucks. It is hot at eight p.m. and it gets hotter by midnight. What's up with that?

I am making some friends here, which may take some pressure off my friends back home who have to contend with my whiny phone calls. I've met a couple of really cool people- and even some queers, right here in the great state of Texas! I thought that George Bush would have erradicated all of us by now. I even met someone I may be able to live with when I get to North Carolina, where I will ultimately land. She wants hardwood floors, music, and good (i.e. not chicken fried steak slathered in gravy) food! Lord bless Terri, my new friend!  ¶ 8:35 PM

  I just entered Teach for America- an Americorp program that trains you for five weeks and then sticks you in front of a classroom for two years. I am in my first week of that training in Houston, Texas. I have heard that the first year of teaching is one of the hardest things anyone can ever go through, so I figured, why not share my misery with others?

Teach for America is an organization I had heard a lot of criticism about before I joined. The process of applying was pretty easy, but the selection was very competitive. So far, for anyone thinking of joining, I'd still recommend it. They have been pretty organized. I was originally accepted into the Bay Area, California Corp, which was great because I was living in the Bay pretty happily. Then last Wednesday, they transfered me to work in lovely North Carolina, instead. Now, I only say "lovely" as a guess, having never been south of Colorado. So last Moday- looking for apartments in San Francisco. Today, the insides of my elbows are sticking together from humidity in Houston, Texas, where I am being trained. As a West Coast girl my entire life, I am more than a little worried about moving down south. When I mentioned to some of my new "friends" here in Houston that I appreciated it when people were not homophobic (in response to the word "fag" being used four times in two sentences), the entire group of ten stared at me as though I had just shouted that I was a pagan lesbian. I'm really not used to that kind of thing. For reals.

I have been lesson planning like crazy because even though I have only been here for five days, I will have my own class starting on Monday. With five days of training (be it as it were that those were about eighteen hour days), I will have 18 ESL students that range in age from 13-16 who speak absolutely no English. My task, as I understand it, is to teach them the elements of a short story....hmmm. We will see how that goes.   ¶ 10:17 PM