One down...

Work has been stressful lately. In fact, that's a bit of an understatement, considering the elegant purple luggage set I'm cultivating underneath my eyes, the ever-sinking pH level of my stomach and the fact that I am steadily losing weight, due not to stellar nutritional choices or a new sporty lifestyle but because the constant worrying and faux-sleeping is apparently upping my metabolism. Like leaving a car on idle, I guess; at some point you just run out of gas. Anyway, it doesn't feel healthy.

But the major good news of the day is that one portion of the Majorly Stressing Out Period has been taken care of in a big bad way. The program is over! Halleluia! I have been coordinating a May term program of Cute Little University of the Midwest, a program which has been causing (literally) quite a few headaches. What I somehow didn't manage to realize until today is that the program is a really, really cool one, offering some small-town midwestern kids the chance to experience a world in which they don't know the rules or the language, to hop right in and start fending for themselves.

These past two weeks, I have been accompanying seven college students as they did an educational field experience at a local elementary school. Every day, while I was running around like Mike, trying to organize all the behind-the-scenes details, they squared their cute midwestern shoulders and went into those somewhat-familiar-and-yet-somehow-unsettling East German classrooms, built up relationships with teachers with whom they could barely communicate, and charmed the kids into learning their English lessons.

This afternoon, the teachers and field ed students met for a round of evaluations that felt more like a mutual love-fest. The classroom teachers, field ed student and kids all loved each other. The kids were sad to see them go. We're already making plans for next year. I was amazed at the confidence and skills of these 20-year-old girls from Smalltown, USA; the way they faced their fears and learned new ways to communicate and be professional waaaaaay outside their comfort zones. Sam, Sarah, Steph, Meghan, Elise, Kendall and Emily, you guys rock.

And now, on to bigger and better Majorly Stressful Situations.