September 2019 Update

 Hey everyone!

Nathan and I are doing well. Friday was the end of my 4th week teaching, so it feels pretty exciting to have a whole month down. Some days are hard and a little overwhelming, but overall I am loving my job as a teacher. I constantly tell Nathan about "my kids" and I honestly love my students a lot. 4th grade is a fun age because they are old enough to tell me funny jokes and riddles and do things independently and have really good discussions in class, but they are also still young enough to be really sweet and eager to please. They love to be helpful. I have to remember to ask someone specific to do a favor for me, because if I just say, "Can someone turn off the light for me?" I have at least 5 kids sprinting over to the light switch. They constantly ask me "Can I erase the board for you?" or "Can I help you with ____?" One of the hardest things of teaching so far has been the fact that my school district adopted a new math program this year. That means that not only am I figuring out what I am doing, but the other teachers on my team are also figuring out how to use it. Besides that, I have one student who moved here from Mexico like a week before school started and speaks zero English. She and I can get by with our Portuguese/Spanish, but it's hard to know how to help her do the assignments the other kids do, or how to make accommodations for her. Luckily, my class has really taken her under their wing and lots of them have gone out of their way to become her friend, so she is doing great socially. Teaching has been a great adventure and I am excited to keep learning! 

Nathan seems to be enjoying his classes at BYU so far, although usually the most detail I get about them is "They're fine" or "They're normal" haha. I'll let him write a paragraph about his schedule and classes. 

Nathan here. I am taking 6 classes, 15.5 credits; Chemical Engineering safety/environment/ethics, Material Science, Physical Chemistry (we are learning about crystal structures and crystallography right now, Dad), Fluid Mechanics, Career Seminar, and Christ and the Everlasting Gospel. So my workload is pretty heavy this semester and will also be heavy next semester. But as Amy said, my classes are "fine" and "normal."

So, funny story. We started writing this email yesterday and were going to say that we don't have a lot of other updates and we both still have our same callings in YM/YW.....however, a few minutes later, we got a text from our ward secretary asking if we could meet with the bishop this morning. We have both now accepted new callings: Nathan, as 1st counselor in the YM presidency and Amy as YW president. So that's pretty scary and exciting. 

Although we have not been watering our garden as consistently as we used to, it has been producing lots of tomatoes, green beans, green peppers, zucchini, squash and more. We love getting to eat so many fresh vegetables and enjoy the fruit of our months of work. We also got passes to the Provo rec center so that we can be better at exercising regularly. I love going to the fitness classes that they offer there and Nathan enjoys playing basketball with random strangers and lifting weights. We even tried playing pickleball once, even though we didn't bother to look up any of the rules of the game before we went, so we basically just hit the ball back and forth. It's been fun and good motivation to work out more often! 

Yesterday, Nathan got to go to a stake primary activity that was for dads and daughters. I think most of you know about the Tardiolis, the Brazilian family in our ward who we have become close to. The parents are now separated and the dad isn't really in the picture, so Nathan filled in as a substitute "dad" so that Amanda, their 8-year-old daughter, could attend the activity. She had a blast with Nathan and it was really cute, so I'll attach some pictures. 

Sorry we're terrible at taking pictures...we'll try to take more in these next few weeks before it's our turn for the email update again. The other ones I attached are from when we hiked the Y with Justin over Labor Day weekend and when we visited Logan and Christi last Sunday. 

We love you all!

Nathan and Amy