Introduction, really

I suppose I should introduce this blog. Or maybe I shouldn't but I'm going to anyway.

My name is James. I just graduated from Whitworth University with a B.A. in Music Performance in May. I'm currently enrolled in Whitworth's Master in Teaching program to get some certification to begin teaching middle or high school band, and the plan is to also get endorsed to teach German in the near future as well. The program is awesome! I will be in class through the end of July when "summer break" begins for the program, and then I am postponing the rest until fall term 2012.

In the meantime I received a Fulbright English Teaching Assisstantship to Germany. That begins this September and will continue through June 2012. It's a pretty sweet deal-I'm getting paid to work in an English classroom in Germany for a year to help students improve their English skills, develop relationships with the students and the community and hopefully be a positive representation of American culture while coming to a greater understanding of German culture and language myself. I'm hoping to join an orchestra and/or choir while I'm there to keep up my musical skills, and maybe take some lessons too if it works out.

One of my best friends from high school also got a Fulbright ETA and will be in Germany at the same time as me! I'm looking forward to being able to share some of my experiences with her and beginning our adventure together by being seat buddies on the flight from Seattle to Frankfurt.

I've been planning on starting a blog to document my time in Germany but since I'm not around my family too much this summer I thought it would be fun to start one now so that they can maybe read up on me every now and then if they want (see previous post). It isn't going to be a daily kind of blog, but I may post several days in a row if I feel like it. There will be pictures and maybe some quotes and some YouTube videos of things that I think are funny, but mostly I think it will end up being a random assortment of stories and maybe a lot of posts about music I'm listening to.

Starting a blog, I think, can be a lot like starting a Facebook account. There are all sorts of funny stories that wouldn't take very much to write down, all kinds of things to do to my blog to make it look cool or more interesting to look at. I must resist the urge to post everything I do!

Spokane's Got Me In Stitches

I've only been back in Spokane for a week and I'm already bruised and scraped and split open. On Wednesday I was riding my bike from my house to school over in Hawthorne, just minding my own business. It was funny because someone had honked at me, not like a toot, but like an actual "braaaaaap" kind of honk because apparently I was taking up too much of the shoulder by riding a little to the left of the white line and he/she didn't want to move over. So I was thinking about that a little bit and thinking about how many issues drivers have with bikes and how frustrating that is when I was getting to the driveway of Hawthorne. I leaned into the turn as I started going around the corner when I hit a patch of gravel and lost traction with my front wheel. As I was going down I reached out to catch myself with both hands which didn't actually help that much, thought "Oh crap I think this'll hurt," and then slammed my chin on the ground. Luckily there weren't any cars coming and there was a lady walking so she came over to see if I was okay. I got up and shook myself off, but she noticed that I was bleeding so she gave me a Kleenex she had in her pocket until I could get to a bathroom for some paper towels.
I went into the bathroom in Hawthorne, checked it out and saw how awesome the gash in my chin looked, then went to check in with my professor and let her know I was going to be a little late after all. Then I walked over to the health center, which is actually closed all summer, then I walked home to get my car and drive myself to the urgent care center down the road a bit.

I swear, the lines in urgent care are like the slowest lines ever. there were 3 people in front of me but it took at least a half-hour to talk to the receptionist. Once I was through that, it was another hour or so until someone could see me. The gauze I'd gotten was definitely stuck to my chin, so the nurse had to pour water all over it until it sort of came unstuck enough to peel it off. Gross. Then I got to sit through the scrubbing and rinsing, which felt weird more than painful, and thinking about it now makes me squirm. Then the doc came in and checked it out, and then I got some nice anesthetic shots to numb the stitching. The great part is the shots hurt more than anything. I actually almost passed out, which is funny because that has never happened to me before and I only started getting lightheaded a minute or two after the most painful shot.

I went with blue stitches to go with my bike. 9 sutures and 5 knots is the final tally, and some reasonably deep scrapes on my palms. Bandaids on the insides of your hands are nearly impossible to keep from falling off. Those big bandaids that cover huge wounds? Not really that sticky.

Inventory of pain as of Saturday morning: stitches in my chin, sore jaw/can't open my mouth wide enough to eat sandwiches, stiff neck, scraped palms, bruised right shoulder, bruise on my hip, scrape on my right shin. Pictures soon.