I just got off for vacation and am currently sosososososoooooo excited for my red-eye Amtrak ride home tonight (lol jk no). So in the spirit of break, I thought I'd write about City Year! Woot woot!
To sum up most of the past couple weeks, my kids are the cutest, my teacher's the best, my team is a giant shlove muffin, Durim can now read 80 words a minute (up from 30!), and the gel inserts in my timbs keep shifting when I walk and it's super uncomfortable. I did have one out of the ordinary, adventury day. Do you wanna hear about it???????? Do you??!?!?!?!?!?!?
I'll tell you.
The day was December 15, and it began with my waking up 20 minutes before my alarm went off, and I couldn't fall back asleep. But I soldiered on and got ready as I usually would, bravely unperturbed by this cruel twist of fate. Except then when I got to my metro stop, I realized that I had forgotten my lunch. Whatever. Ish happens.
Now, I usually switch trains at Fort Totten, which, in my opinion, is a refreshing, low-key, low-stress, open-aired station. But no. Not today. Today I just had to switch at Chinatown, you know, to change things up a bit.
The Chinatown station is icky. It's an overcrowded, over-complicated, stuffy station (no offense G-Place, C-Town, but it's true). Trying to switch from the Red line to the Green is a real feat. You know that scene in 300 in which the Spartans form a human wall and push the huge Persian army off a cliff? The one that's on all the posters? It's like that. Except instead of a whole Persian army, I'm just me, so it's really unfair.
Yet once again I would not give up. I broke free of that suffocating crowd and made my way towards the gate to tag out (= how to avoid paying exit fare when you have a short trip metro pass and a too long commute). Suddenly, I saw a train approaching from underneath the platform, and knowing how unpredictable the green line can be in the morning, I forwent the tagging out and made a run for it. I made it with time to spare.
I was deeply engrossed in my space-out-on-the-train routine, when suddenly the tunnel opened up and I found myslef being shuttled over the Potomac. While that provides for a wonderful view, it is not supposed to happen during my commute to school. It was with dawning apprehension that I raised my gaze, and my eyes were met with that most contemptible of words, in neon writing suspended from the ceiling: YELLOW. Oh, how it mocked me! I was careening straight towards God Knows Where, Virginia, and there was nothing I could do about it. I kept my cool, lest any of my fellow passengers realize my grievous error. When the train pulled into a stop at Pentagon, I calmly got up, knowing that I still had time to turn around and arrive to school by eight. I waited for the doors to open with no trace of freaking out on my face. And I waited.
And I waited.
And then, would you guess what happened? The conductor came over the intercom to let us all know that a suspicious package had been found at Pentagon station ("Hey! That's where I am!"), and we would have to get off at Pentagon City. But first we waited at Pentagon for a good 15 minutes. But it was for my safety or something, so it was OK. When I finally got to Pentagon City, I was told that a shuttle had been requested to get to L'Enfant Plaza ("Great! That's where I need to go!"). So I waited outside of the station. And I waited. And I waited. For like a half hour. In the cold. There was zero communication. Then a bus, that had been parked next to me for that whole half hour, decides to make a run to L'Enfant. Well, how freakin convenient! I got on the bus (ever played "sardines"?), got to L'Enfant, took the bus to school, and got there at 8:50, just in time to miss my monthly literacy coordinator conference call!
Also, my class had a sub that day. They were not very well behaved. Not very well behaved at all.
At least there was a Christmas show put on by some of the students, which made the whole day all right.
Happy holidays!
P.S. I found out later that day that the "suspicious package" was a blinking Christmas ornament in a trashcan.
