my new students are starting to grow on me. they're so small! i forget that they're just pretty much kindergartners. i have to teach them how to read. they struggle with reading simple sight words like "is, the, on," when the last thing i remembered about my previous class was their ability to read words like "revolution, imagination, completely." now, those are not first grade words. my class this year also asks me to tie their shoelaces every half hour. i forgot about that too. i didn't realize how much my first graders grow... my kids last year were just like that. i helped them to learn to read and write! and how they're going strong in second grade. =) i'm always checking up on my babies with their new teachers. i miss them...

one of my old students asked to stay after school with me to help out. i said she could only if her mother said yes. so she got to stay, and afterwards while i was taking her home, i almost got into an accident right in front of her mom. i was approaching her house on a narrow residential street where lotsa kids are playing and riding their bikes, so naturally i'm driving slow. so just as i was making the left onto her driveway, i see her family kinda make a surprised face. i stop and brake in the middle of my turn. just then a car to my left comes up right to my door and screeches to a halt. he tried to pass me up cuz he was angry that i was driving slow. HELLO. he came up so close to me that i thought his bumper actually grazed my door. i start to open the door to get out, but the dood has the nerve to yell at me and say "look behind u before u turn!" etc. etc. oh wow, homeboy has the balls to make it sound like my fault? wow. u could bet i would've mouthed him off if not for the presence of a child and mother. well, maybe not, because it's his hood and i don't wanna be all targeting myself in any way. so the guy storms off and drives away fast (probably endangering other children's lives). at any rate, the mom wasn't mad at me, and things were cool. but i was soooo shaky. =p impatient people man.

things are weird at my school. politics and people man... everything is not as it appears to be. i'm always on guard now, but there are a few that i can trust. it sucks though, how trust has to be so safeguarded. i guess that applies to other aspects of life in general, particularly with relationships. it's interesting to hear from friends the different versions that my exes like to tell about the past. if it makes them feel better, all the better for them. i'm cool with me and what i have now. but to think back on how they treated me and made me feel so inferior for so many months... that adds up to a lot of detrimental ish. i'm surprised how sound i am today, despite the shit they made me go through. they need to check their maleness, cuz they're damn blind to it. what the majority of women go through because of men, and what men do at the expense of women... makes me so angry. and i see so many of my friends affected in very detrimental ways because of these kinds of men. it's sad, cuz most guys don't even realize or think they're like that. then things don't change. i know i'm blessed that i'm with someone like benji, though. so atypical in this sense (well, in many senses). when i told my hawai'i friends about him while we were out there on o'ahu, they couldn't believe someone like benji existed. or they had this weird image of what he would be like. when they met him, they affirmed that the things i had said about him were true, and that he even surpassed their perceptions. he was cool, normal, and yet unique in all the ways i shared about him. i consider myself lucky. =) this summer apart did so much for us. our relationship has gone to another level, and things are... nice. =)