New Blog, Fresh Start!

 

I'm moving!  

Since I last posted (in July of 2020!!) I have actually moved to a new living space, but that's not what I'm talking about now.  I mean, I'm moving to a new digital space!  I've been writing more and more over at my new blog Megan Rediscovers Her Life!

So, why the change?  It comes down to a few things...

1. I created this blog for school when I was 16.  While it's grown beyond my 16-year-old self and changed over time (of course), I'm now 30.  That's a long time to be tied to one space and be connected to the content that I was putting out in high school.

2. I want to write different content.  Even when I was still writing here, it was getting harder and harder to write about what I was reading.  It was taking the joy out of that experience, so I was already starting to shift away from that sort of content.

3. I don't want my identity to only be books.  The older I've gotten, I have become more and more aware that I have made my identity books and teaching.  If you asked me how things were going in my life, I would give you some kind of an answer related to teaching.  What I teach is always connected to books, whether I like it or not.  So I'm giving myself this new space to talk about and explore the parts of my life that are not explicitly connected to books.

It's been a while since I posted here, so I'm not even sure how many people have stuck around (thank you if that's you).  But if you're interested in reading what I've been up to and what I'm experiencing in life right now, you can find me on Megan Rediscovers Her Life.  I have a few posts there right now with more scheduled and ready to go as early as this weekend.  I may talk about what I read in the future and include some things about teaching, but it's largely about goals, travel, and hobbies I've been working on.

I've been enjoying getting back into blogging, with or without an audience, but I hope that you'll join me over there.  This blog will stay up (there's a lot of good memories here and posts that I don't want to get rid of), but I will no longer be adding to it after this post.

Thank you for your support over the years!  I'm looking forward to this new chapter!

--Jude (Megan)

To The Bride and Groom

Note: It has been several months and I have been well-aware of the fact that my blog has been wasting away without even so much as a book review.  But now that I only have a couple more weeks of student teaching followed shortly by graduation, my workload is slowly becoming less and less and so every now and again, I have pockets of down time.  This weekend is one of free time pockets and so I thought I'd do a little bit of a life update and share some photos of a very important time in my life.

This past August, I married my best friend.  Maybe it's a cliche to start out a post this way, but it's true.

In December 2014, my now husband proposed to me in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam while I was finishing up my time abroad.  With school and other life things, we waited over a year and a half to be married.  Finally, on 19 August, the big day arrived:

I spent the night at home with my parents, slept in my childhood room, and got ready for the day surrounded by friends and family.  It was lovely.

I had gotten my dress (that is, picked it out at the Bridal shop) about a week after returning from my semester abroad in the Netherlands.  My veil was my mom's wedding veil, but changed around a little to suit my needs and taste.  It was strange to be so made up (I never wear make-up in my day-to-day life) and to be so dressed up.  I've found that when I'm supposed to look nice for an event (like prom or my wedding), I always surprise people because I don't normally look this way or try this hard to look nice.

I hate having my picture taken, but this was a totally different experience.  To have a photographer follow you around all day was just a strange experience, even though I appreciated his friendliness and flexibility.  This person was also the guy who took our engagement photos, so we had worked with him before.  What made this part of the day special was that my husband and I got to be together all day and we got to be with our sisters and friends for most of the day.  Because all of us are in school and involved in a whole bunch of other activities, it's rare to get us all together in one place.  But this was nice.

Finally, after hours and hours of taking pictures, it was time.  The pastor of my family's church married us, because we had a great bond with her (I was her daughter's first babysitter after she was adopted).  We didn't get married in a church, but we got married in a hall called the Klub Haus, which takes pride in its German heritage.

The reception afterwards was amazing-- I danced to Golden Slumbers by the Beatles and The Sound of Silence covered by Disturbed with my dad and my new husband and I danced to La Vie En Rose covered by Louis Armstrong.  It was so much fun to dance with my friends who came to celebrate our day with us and dance with my family too.  We danced up until the last possible minute!  

This is mostly an excuse to share these beautiful picture that our photographer took.  

Weddings are difficult to plan, even when you're splitting it between several people.  I was just so happy with how the whole thing came together.  The food was great (hamburgers and chicken for dinner, ridiculously good cupcakes for dessert), the place looked beautiful, and it was really great to have almost everyone I know in attendance!  This is a day that I will fondly remember for the rest of my life.

Thank you for celebrating the start of our married lives together!  We can't wait to see what adventures will come next!

--Jude

A Short Jaunt in Iowa

The day after I moved out of my home, my mom and I got in the car and we sped off to Iowa (I'll tell you why in a bit).  Well... we sped off for maybe 30-45 minutes.  Possibly an hour.  We had to make our first pit stop at the Largest Candy Store in Minnesota!  And really, it's not just a lot of candy in this place.  It's a lot of everything.  Soda (or is it "pop"?), puzzles... it's a whole lot of everything.

As soon as we walked in, we were a little overwhelmed by just how much stuff was in this one place.  I mean, just take a look.  In the picture, I wasn't that far inside of the front door.  You can't even see the other side of the store...

Here are some of the more interesting foods that I found:

Rows and rows of differently flavored salt water taffy

A whole section of Dutch food!  The treats!

Stroopwaffels

Referring to the Larvets and the Ant Candy: Ew.

As overwhelming as Minnesota's Largest Candy Store is... it's a little bit magical too.  Mom liked looking for the candies that she had when she was a kid and I just liked looking at the weird flavors of everything this place had to offer.

So after telling ourselves that we would only spend fifteen minutes in this place, finding presents for some of the people in our lives that we like, and actually spending somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes in Minnesota's Largest Candy Store... it was time to say goodbye and continue on our journey.

So the reason that we were headed to Iowa is this: my mom's best friend from high school teaches eighth grade English (and a section of history).  For a while, we had talked about how I should come down and see how she works.  She's been a teacher for twenty-seven years.  Finally, we found a time that would work for both of us.  We'd come down on a Wednesday, I'd go to school with Beth (my mom's friend) Thursday and Friday, and then we'd go home on Sunday.

I don't have pictures from the school because of permission and privacy reasons, but I have the memories.  Both Thursday and Friday were under heat advisory.  This means that students had half days (unless they had sports, in which case they still had to stay and play sports, which is just dumb).
Thursday I mainly watched and I sorted files to finish getting ready for the school year.  I was happy to be busy.  I'm discovering that I'm the kind of person that is uncomfortable sitting and not doing very much.  Friday was a lot better because I got to "teach" a bit!  I finished up a lesson on personality types and learning styles (they were paired with colors) and I gave a spelling test on the names of the teachers the eighth graders will come into contact with this year.  It's harder that it sounds, some of the names, because it's apparent that some of the teachers have Dutch heritage by their names (Mrs. De Zeeuw, Mrs. Hoogeveen, etc.).  On this day, towards the end of the day, we put on music because the students wanted to dance.  Some of those kids have skills, seriously.

After school on Friday, it was hot, but not so hot that we couldn't go out and enjoy Orange City a little bit.  The cool thing about Orange City is that it's a Dutch bubble.  And they really market on that.  Everywhere you look, there are wind mills, signs in Dutch, and if you come in the spring, there are tulips everywhere (but right now, they're a little out of season).  So here are some pictures from my wanderings...

"Welcome to the Back Garden"

"See You, Come Back"

"Bridge to Orange City"

This is a telephone booth :)

After going home for a little while, we decided to go back out again to a little place called De Zoete Winkel, which in Dutch means "The Sweet Shop."  Driving past, I thought it was a candy store, but it's actually a serve yourself fro-yo place.  It was really yummy :)

Dancing to the music :)

This was a really fun long weekend (well, Wednesday to Saturday) and I enjoyed visiting my mom's friend as well as getting a chance to teach a little bit!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

The Great Minnesota Get Together

Right before moving, Jack and I decided to make a visit to the Great Minnesota Get Together-- The State Fair!  It had been longer than we wanted since we had seen each other in person, so this was a much needed date day.  And actually, we went on one of the nicest days-- relatively cool, sunny, and breezy all day long.

One of the first things that I made Jack do with me was climb to the top of the ranger tower that is set up near the DNR booth.  It's just... I like climbing up tall things.  I did a lot of that in Europe.

As you can see, pretty much everyone and their mother also decided that it was a great day to visit the fair that day.  This makes for a lot of great people watching.  We didn't do this, but I heard that there was State Fair People Watching Bingo with things to find like, someone with blonde dreadlocks and someone with five kids or things like that.  The reason why I bring this up is because I saw the most stereotypical country boy and I just need to tell the world about it.  This guy was wearing jeans with a big belt buckle, a plaid shirt, and when he spoke, he had a thick Minnesota country accent complete with a "Wooo-hooo!" associated with a cowboy in the west.  Holy cow.  I can't make this stuff up and apparently neither can the writers or directors of any cowboy book or movie ever.

Next we visited the Miracle of Birth barn so that I could see baby animals and their mamas.  It's possible to watch live births with the cows and pigs and sheep there, but I've never seen more than the video footage.  Birth is such a fascinating process.  I know that a number of people think it's really gross and would not care to see it themselves, but... I just feel like you have to appreciate what the females of the world have to go through in order to perpetuate whatever species they belong to.  And to think that humans willing go to many lengths to conceive and carry their babies to term... just... wow.

Jack and I did a lot of walking and looking.  Just walking around and nearly running over or getting run over by strollers and people who are bigger than you, it's easy to get the feel for just how many people are at this place with you.  And then you get pictures like this and you think holy.... expletive.  Just look at how far the crowd of people stretch down this road.

One of our favorite things to do while we're at the fair is go on the Sky Ride.  You sit on this ski lift chair and you can ride over the fair.  It's a nice way to take a break from walking and also figure out what other things you'd like to see in other parts of the fair.

Some of the other things that we saw and did was go to the Environmental building where I immediately saw my new favorite form of camping:

I can't tell you how cute I think this trailer camper thingy is and how much I want to spend a week living out of it.  We also saw a tiny house which I absolutely loved.  I am obsessed with tiny houses.  You don't even know, because I haven't talked about it on here before.

We saw this really neat kinetic sculpture in the art building that simulates the movements of ocean waves.

I can't talk about the State Fair and not talk about the fair food.  We discovered a little trick this time around so that we could eat a lot of food in one day.  The trick is this: split your food.  For example, I wanted to try friend pickles.  I'd never had them before and I was intrigued.  But instead of Jack and I getting a small tray each, we got one and shared that food.  So we did a lot of tasting and we got to try and eat a lot of different kinds of food without feeling like crap at the end of the day.  It was really great.  The picture above was my dinner-- a wild rice cheese burger.  Minnesota is known for its wild rice and this burger, also something that I hadn't tried before, was freaking delicious.  I'd love to learn how to make this at home.  Someday I will.

Okay, I'm curious.  If you live in another state, I especially want to hear from you.  In Minnesota, part of the State Fair is selecting the winner of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way pageant (?) winner and then she gets her head carved into a 20 lb block of butter.  As my mom said, "What a waste of butter."  Also, seeing that much butter, and there are several blocks in this refrigerated rotating room, is just nasty, even when you were born and raised in a state partially known for its dairy (perhaps behind Wisconsin, but who's counting?).  Is this a thing at other State Fairs too or is this a kooky Minnesota thing?

After we got our ice cream cones (a must... ice cream just tastes better at the State Fair.  I don't know why) and picked up Jack's family a bucket of Sweet Martha's cookies (what?  You can freeze them and they last all year!), we decided that this was a good end to the day.  We hopped on the bus which would take us back to where we parked our borrowed car.  It was the end to a very good day and a welcome reprieve right before our big move.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude