Moving into my apartment!

Yay! Finally it's time to get settled into my apartment!

It's a beautiful day in Baton Rouge to move into my new apartment! 

Look how gorgeous Baton Rouge is!

My new home!

My living room

My empty bedroom!

Such a big bathroom AND closet! Yay!

Double sink! I don't have to share with Nic, yay!

Pretty kitchen with granite counter tops! 

(started decorating a bit, but need to hang up some stuff still, no judging yet!)

So pretty, love it!

View from my balcony, love that I can see the pool!

When I walk out my front door, over by the staircase there is a little balcony. 

This is the view of behind my apartment. It's a beautiful little horse pasture. 

Isn't it pretty! I love walking out of my door to this view every day!

I started decorating a little! I love mason jars. I thought it would be cute

to do my flour and sugar in mason jars. I added a cute bow to jazz it up a bit! 

I also started a cupcake liner jar -- the one in the middle holds all of my fun cupcake

liners. My kitchen is slowly coming together as I decorate. 

I just can't wait for Nic to get here so we can decorate our apartment together!

I also wanted to go by my school since I hadn't seen it yet. I definitely wasn't expecting it to be this amazing looking school, but it's pretty nice for a recovery school district school! 

Here it is, Dalton Elementary! 

New teacher orientation is next Friday, ON MY BIRTHDAY! Woohoo! 

It will be such a great day getting to meet all of the teachers 

I will be working with, and more importantly, to see my school! Yay! 

We don't have access to our classrooms until the 30th, so I definitely can't wait for that day to come. 

Oh, and by the way, I've decided to do a Carnival themed classroom! 

I'm so excited, it's going to be the cutest classroom ever! woohoo!

  I just have to add to it little by little since I don't get paid until I start working. 

But hey, we gotta do what we gotta do!

LAST DAY!

Friday was our last day school! During the week it started to hit me that this was the last time I would ever see my students again. I worked relentlessly this summer to make a difference in the life trajectories of my students, and it certainly paid off! Most of my students not only met their summer school goal, but exceeded it! Makaylan improved in math and reading this summer by over 122%! Granted she is a very fast learner and such a joyful student, but I was extremely proud of her. Robert, my little troublemaker improved in reading by 115%! Yay! Seeing these results really instilled in me the confidence that I will make this much of a difference with my students this fall. 

I was very sad to leave my students this summer, but wanted to make our last day very special.

My group and I went to the dollar store and bought our students 

some fun "rockstar" gear for their last day. 

We had SO much fun! Here are some pictures from the day!

I think Robert and Makaylan have a little romance going on...

My group and I were laughing so hard when we saw this, but

we definitely caught onto their love for each other throughout the summer.

Ready to walk to lunch! 

The whole school was so jealous of our cool "rockstar" gear!

My love bug!

My teaching group and our students!

"Rock on!"

We also played some music and let our students have a dance party!

And let me tell you...they love to dance more than anything! 

Not mention they are quite the little dancers!

We also gave them awards!

Then the kids gave us teacher awards. 

They awarded me the best hugger! How cute :)

At the end of the day we went outside and had a bubble party and played some music. 

Janiya wanted to show me some of her Michael Jackson dance moves! haha

I will truly miss each and every one of my students. They made such an impact on my life and I hope I made one on theirs as well. I wish you all could have met these wonderful little ones, they were so amazing! I know that I will take everything I learned this summer, the good and the bad, and create a wonderful classroom culture this fall. I only hope that I have students that are amazing like my little summer school babies!

Fun pictures from Greenwood!

My roommate loves to do photography so she brought her 

camera on our road trip yesterday and took fun pictures!

Stephanie and I

Victoria (who is in the Appalachia region), Christina and me

Salena, Alice, Victoria, Christina, Me and Stephanie

I found this cool old fashioned truck parked on the side of the street so 

Hanna took some neat photos of me with the truck!

The next group of pictures are my favorite. You know the part in The Notebook where Noah and Ally lay in the middle of the intersection at night? Well, we saw this intersection downtown that looked just like the one in the movie. It was my bright idea to reenact the part in the movie with Christina and Victoria since the intersection seemed pretty dead. Little did we know that the pavement would be scalding hot! I guess I should have figured that. As we're laying down, we're all yelling at Hanna to hurry and take the pictures because the pavement is burning our backs. Then, I look over and see that a police car is driving towards us! I screamed and we all started to run away. Mind you..as this whole scenario is happening, Hanna is just snapping away, taking pictures of the event. We were laughing so hard and the pictures turned out hilarious! Here is our little romantic reenactment of The Notebook scene. I guess it did turn out just like the movie when they run away as a car comes towards them!

Just laying on the hot pavement.

Yelling at Hanna to hurry!

Oh shoot! The cop is coming! 

Victoria didn't know what was happening (as she just lays there still)

I got us so fast, scared the cop would come get us!

It just hit Victoria that we're about to get in trouble.

And I'm being a lady as I run away. 

This day was so much fun. I couldn't have asked for a better day! :)

A Tour Of Greenwood, Mississippi

Fried Alligator Bites! They were actually really good. I mean, really. Especially with this Comeback Sauce. Mmm! Alligator tastes just like chicken. I think it was also good because it was fried, and let's be honest, what's fried that isn't good? I will definitely have to try alligator again. And if you haven't tried it, you must!

Howard Street in downtown Greenwood

Cool old buildings

Pretty church downtown

They have a bunch of things representing The Help.

This amazing bookstore, Turn Row. It's very southern and quaint and just beautiful. It makes you want to buy all of the books inside. I actually bought my very first children's book yesterday, The Cat in the Hat! I decided to get a classic for my first children's book. I can't wait to start my own little library for my classroom, Ms. Knall's Library. Yay!

Pretty house in Greenwood.

Another pretty house.

And another..

And another..

Just outside Greenwood they had this really cool little group of old wooden houses. It looked like it was out of a movie in a swamp or something. I think people live in these because one of the buildings is actually a tavern. I just thought these looked so cool!

Beautiful corn!

The vegetation here is just breathtaking, isn't it? It never gets old to look at all day...

And now we start our tour of the actual filming locations from The Help.

Hilly Holbrook's house. This is the woman who Minny works for and 

brings her the pie on this front porch!

The Leefolt Home. 

Remember when Aibeleen leaves her job and 

Mae Mobley sits in this front window and cries? 

Aibeleen's Home.

Once you pass the train tracks, you can definitely tell that the area is predominantly black and poor. All of these homes seem to be really rundown. Despite the poverty, there is such a sense of community. Everyone just sits on their front porch and it's rare to see a house without chairs on the front porch. Funny story with this house. We were parked outside and taking pictures of it and a few minutes later we realized there was actually a man sitting on the front porch! He was just smiling and waving at us, haha. We just didn't see him through the screen! We quietly drove away...

We tried to find Skeeter's plantation home, but got really lost so decided to quit looking for it. It was so neat to see how proud this community was of their "fame" from the movie. 

The Help is actually based off the town Jackson which is 90 miles away. The film directors just loved Greenwood's frozen in time character, which is exactly what it's like! There is just so much history here, just in the bricks and buildings alone. It truly is so amazing to see. It makes me realize that people are so mesmerized by seeing other "popular" destinations in the country, but most would never think to come to tiny towns in the south and learn about them. I'm so lucky that I was placed here for the summer because it really has opened my eyes to seeing parts of the country I would have never cared to see. I would have never heard of this town if I weren't placed in Cleveland for the summer, so I am blessed to have this experience. 

More beautiful pictures of Greenwood!

Cool old building!

Pretty church

Cute little restaurant where we had lunch,

and where I tried alligator!

They had such great food. I got a pimento cheese grilled cheese.

They also had fried green tomatoes! My friends got the fried green tomato BLT, yum!

Downtown shops

Cool sign

Old building in Greenwood.

And my favorite picture...

how gorgeous is this?!