Dig through
your couch cushions, your purse, or the floor of your car and look at the year
printed on the first coin you find. What were you doing that year?
Okay, so I
chose a random coin from the ceramic “Sand Dollars” jar my boys gave me one
Christmas that currently sits in the laundry room to collect pocket change
before or after the wash, and I got a penny from 1970. If I go with that first
coin, this will be a VERY SHORT entry because I wasn’t born then. J So, I wasn’t doing anything.
I chose
again, and this time I came up with a nickel from the year 1999. Now, that’s a year I can tell you about. Here’s where I was and what I was doing back
then:
Where: Kwajalein
What: Teaching Developmental English classes at the College of the Marshall
Islands satellite campus located on Guegeegue. In order to do this, I had to
travel by boat every morning at exactly 7:10 am to the island of Ebeye (around
20 minutes or so), then wait on a cement block that served as a bench outside
the Triple J grocery store for our school bus to come pick us up along with our
students and travel another 30 minutes or so to campus across the man-made
coral causeway filled with potholes, rusty construction equipment, and all
sorts of treasures from the ocean that had washed over the causeway during high
tide. This was a part time job, so I did
the same commute back around 11:00 am, catching my boat home at 11:30, and
arriving just in time for lunch around 12:00 pm. Tops my list as one of my
FAVORITE jobs, EVER!! Even the commute
was fun! (I’ll try and remember to share
a piece I wrote about it years ago in a later blog entry, so you’ll understand
why it was such a wonderful time and job for me…)
Once I
arrived home, had lunch and a little time to settle after a busy morning, I
headed off to my other part-time job at the base public library. Loved this job too, but in a completely
different way and for completely different reasons. During this time, I was also occasionally writing
feature articles for the small base newspaper.
It was a very good time in my life, profession wise. I tend to enjoy being a bit of a jack of all
trades and having more than one job, schedule, and/or task to do at one time,
and this combined 2 things I already loved doing before I came to Kwaj (reading
and writing) and gave me an opportunity to discover how fulfilling teaching can
be as well.
I was also
going to school (taking classes online and some face-to-face in the evenings)
during the year 1999. Actually, I was completing the last of my classes for my
graduation with a B. A. in English and a minor in Business, and I was looking
into starting a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language as I
was enjoying my job at the College so much and knew it would make me a better
teacher and help me assist my students (who were ALL second language learners) more
effectively and with greater overall success.
Those are
the major parts of my life that year. I
was, of course, still in many ways a newlywed, having been married only 2 years
in 1999, and we had no children at that time, so life was centered around our
jobs and time together after work. My ex
spend long weekend days golfing and long days/evenings at work during the week,
so I kept myself occupied during those times with my own educational and professional
pursuits. For me, that was a very positive thing because it laid the foundation
for what I do now, and it jump started my future career. It was a very good year for me. J
What were
you doing in 1999??
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