I am lying on my bed after my marathon Thursday, utterly exhausted, listening to the German version of Thumbelina's "Let Me Be Your Wings" and trying to figure out how long I can wait until I have to start my homework.

My day started most definitely in the middle of a REM cycle. I did manage to roll myself out of bed and get to work only 10 minutes late, though, which was not a problem. The teacher at work gave me a cup full of Cheerios when I got in the door (breakfast! Since they figured out that I'm a poor college student, both the teachers want to make sure I can eat at work, so I don't have to "waste" meals on things like eating. I love them so much) and we headed upstairs to their Montessori classroom. An awesome thing I've been doing this quarter is coming in the mornings on Thursdays, so I get to see them actually doing official Montessori work. I realized that my favorite, Ferran, knows all his letters, and can actually spell some words. He's four, but I had just never seen him doing any of that before.

At 10:30, I zoomed off to my Politcal Science class in Tech. The 25 minute walk was infinitely more pleasant than last week (last week, with windchill the temperature was -25 degrees Farenheit, so today's +15 felt absolutely balmy). I was incredibly exhausted, so I used my points to buy a can of Starbucks energy/caffeine something or other from "Lisa's Cafe." It did manage to keep me awake during my 90 minute lecture, but by the time it was over, I felt ready to collapse. My lecture gets out at 12:20 and my discussion section starts at 1. Usually, I use those 40 minutes to buy a salad and go over the readings for discussion to be sure I'm able to discuss things intelligently. Well. Today I passed another initiation in the life of a college student. Tech has incredible couches outside of all the huge lecture halls. Instead of getting lunch, I curled up in the corner of one, put my headphones in and my hood up and slept for thirty minutes. It was absolutely incredible.. I was then able to go to discussion awake and refreshed. I just felt like such a college student, sleeping in an extremely public place.. but the funny thing was that about every other couch has a sleeping occupant in the corner.. sometimes they even stretch out, occupying the whole thing. Obviously, that was one of the things I never thought I would do, because that's just so ridiculous, but the kind of late nights that I've been pulling made me rethink that. :)

At work this afternoon, for the third time in a row, they pulled me from my kids to strange children in another group. This makes me very unhappy.. but I try and be flexible and work wherever they need me. I just have the feeling that this is going to be a pattern, and I feel so inadequate when I don't know the group's routine, the kids.. and I feel extremely unhelpful. My motto this week at work has been, "You only have to show me once, but you have to show me once." The first teacher was incredibly unhelpful and got angry with me for not performing my tasks (which I was unaware of).. anyway. But this class (Group D) won all the awards for unusual names. Not one kids had a "normal" name.. I wondered if maybe they categorized them that way on purpose: "oh, you have a strange name.. off to group D!" I think the most normal were Asher and Clive. (Meaning, the names that I had heard before.) Nakaya (girl), Durius (boy), and Dresdon (also boy) were possibly the most unusual.

After work it was back to Chapin for my mystery class, and now it's fifteen minutes after I first started writing this, my German "A Whole New World" has also ended, and I'll probably go and try to get some work done. Tomorrow is another busy day!