Monday, January 12

Off to school this morning, and, as usual for Mondays, Lacey and Maren's bus was here and waiting for them when we got downstairs. Aeden and I had a bus today, too! But then I was unsure about what I was supposed to do once at the school, as some old teachers returned and they rearranged all the class assignments last week while I was gone. Today I helped in the pre-K class and it sounds like I'll be helping in that class now, but I'm just trying to stay flexible and help where I'm told to when I'm told to. It is both relaxing and frustrating to not know what is going on or what the overall plan is and I'm still adjusting to just going with the flow. I got to cut our mittens and mount them on purple paper today, and then file the students' letter worksheets in their portfolio folders. I actually love that kind of work and am glad to get to do it for a while.

Brian came home early from school today to make my birthday cake! I decided on a carrot cake recipe that he picked up from a science camp participant in Tulsa last summer. It is drowned in glaze while still hot and then iced with cream cheese frosting on top of that and it is good and gooey, and we found all the ingredients we needed. Smelled so good today I can hardly wait until tomorrow!

We went out to dinner for my birthday a day early since today's schedule is much easier for Brian and we could go earlier in the evening (which also has the benefit of missing most of the cigarette smoke). Besides, I didn't want to cook tonight! We went to Arjantin Kebap for dinner and then stopped at Deniz Ati bakery on the way home. This time our freebie was little cups of salep, a milk-based drink that is similar to rice pudding liquid and served with cinnamon sprinkled on top. I like the taste of it while drinking it, but it has a strange aftertaste that I just haven't been able to come around to. The drink is based on ground salep powder, which comes from orchid tubers. There are envelopes of instant salep drink mix in the grocery store, too, which we tried, but this version was much tastier.