don't hate la playa, hate the game.

(our boat ride out to a private island in samana where we proceeded to snorkel and swim all day long in paradise.)

(are we liking the fly on the watermelon? super authentic looking. but seriously though, this meal. my 20-year-old self is super proud of my for eating that fish and loving it.)

(what you don't see in that water are millions of tiny supposedly harmless jellyfish that every time you put your head underwater, you can hear the crinkling electricity in your ears and mentally calm yourself down from an anxiety attack.)

so it's a pretty natural part of life for me now to not be able to fully speak unless it's in the baritone range since all i do is yell at tell little kids to sit down, stop flipping each other off, stop making inappropriate body gestures towards each other, and so on and so forth.

oh what, are these rebellious teenagers?

are these high school guys?

no, these are like six-year-old boys AND girls.

yes yes, their mothers love them well.

my sister franny (masters in musical theater) suggested i get a megaphone to save my voice haha. it definitely would take off the strain, buuut that echo in the lunchroom though (yes, i teach my students in the lunchroom. i think it's pretty fitting. maybe or maybe not am i friends with the lunch lady and anytime my students are insane, she comes over and goes ham on them in espanol. and i just sit and point and evil laugh!....i'm a good person. moving on.)

anyways, the other day we were doing a transition between classes (i'll get into that later, but karson takes my students to sarah for her to teach them and i take karson's kids from her to teach them) and these two kids jose gabriel and estaban were being horrible. like climbing all over the lunch tables and screaming. so i grab jose gabriel and, in perfect spanglish, yelled "mama aqui?! mama aqui?!" with my hand in a phone gesture to communicate "listen kid, imma call your mother and she's gonna come down here and kick your trash if you don't sit down and be quiet". anyways, he calmed down after that threat and a few minutes later we're all sitting down and i'm teaching my lesson and a lady comes into the lunchroom and jose gabriel sees her and yells "mama aqui! mama aqui!" and i am thinking "you've got to be shhh-ing me" hahaha like what are the odds that his mom just decides to randomly show up to the school? and jose gabriel's probably thinking "oh, she was just trying to tell me my mom was here and not trying to threaten my life and what a great teacher and i'm just going to be a good little angel boy forever".
LIES.

well i am a great teacher though.