Race

Finishing races is important, but racing is more important.~Dale Earnhardt

Last weekend certainly brought me back to college days. Two scavenger hunts, a night on Beale, a house party, and an a cappella concert. The subsequent crash back to reality on Sunday evening was depressing. Can we please just have weekends all the time? Please?

A fellow TFA-er, Tom, set up a scavenger hunt downtown on Friday night to raise money for the Special Olympics, for whose team he'll be running the Boston Marathon next weekend. It was a blast. From getting together a team of four from our institute high school so that we could wear matching shirts and getting Mexican food and margaritas (hooray for happy hours, but nothing here has beat Mad Mex yet) beforehand to running around downtown in search of take-out menus, FedEx logos, and landmarks, the whole night was a blast. After the hunt, in which Team Dougie placed a respectable third, we hung out at South of Beale for a while and then my roommates and I made our way to Wet Willie's and Alfred's on Beale. There was a good 80's cover band at Alfred's (looked them up just now, and apparently the leads are worship leaders at a church in Midtown), and we danced, in all our fabulous t-shirt, gym shorts, and sneakers glory, to the sounds of Journey, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and Cyndi Lauper, among others. It was one of the best nights I've had in Memphis, for sure.

On Saturday, I went with Jeff to see DeltaCappella perform. One of his friends is in the group, and it was a good time. They weren't the best group I'd ever heard, but they were okay. A couple standout performers for sure: the extremely youthful-looking 40-year-old doctor, the older bass, and the vocal percussionist. After the show, we returned home to a party to celebrate middle school standardized testing. (...Don't worry about it.) There were burgers, booze, and some sort of dance video game, which was highly amusing. I tried to hit the hay early to prepare myself for the next day, though.

Which brings me to Urban Dare, an Amazing Race-style competition held right here in Memphis! Not a whole lot of dare, but a lot of walking around Midtown in 90-degree heat. It was fun, though, and a definite workout. Yo-Lo/Lady Bugg Bakery was one of the pit stops, and by the time Rita and I got there, we knew we weren't even close to the top of the pack, so we cooled down with some gelato. (The honey pear is to die for.) We made balloon swords as one of the "dares," but both of them had popped by the time we got back to the starting point.

This week has been challenging, but three out of my four classes have been really well-behaved, and so I am grateful for that. Still, good behavior or not, most of my students are sorely lacking in math knowledge and skills, and it physically hurts to have a class of geometry students tell me they've never seen slope-intercept form (um... I'm pretty sure you have, but you just don't remember... which makes me worried about my own algebra students now, right? What will they be saying to their geometry teacher next year?) or tell me they don't know how to write the equation of a vertical or horizontal line.

At least it's Friday. Tonight's the prom, and I'll be chaperoning, along with most of the other teachers. I think it'll be fun. I don't recall any teachers at my prom, but I guess they were there? Too much to hope they'll play this gem?