FIRE!!! And free cupcakes

So this last Thursday morning (September 1st) I woke up at 3:45am to one of my roommates moms (she was visiting from Norway) screaming "FIRE! There's a fire!", upon opening the front door we were bombarded with white smoke and immediately turned around to grab a few things and evacuate the building (You know how people always ask what three things would you grab if there was an emergency and you had to leave your home? I always thought I'd grab my scriptures but I didn't even think about it. The only thing I thought to grab was my wallet which was inside my purse so I grabbed my purse, shoes and a random book that was on a table near the front door to read!). My purse also happened to have my camera so I was snapping pictures (all blurry by the way) like crazy throughout the whole ordeal (I was surprisingly calm and not worried at all for some reason). After about 20 minutes or so outside the building we were allowed back in. Some kids had taken the fire extinguishers from several floors and sprayed the floor with them, creating an illusion of "white smoke" in the hallway and pulled the fire alarm. Hurray for pranks! (Personally I think it served as a distraction or cover up for a robbery in one of our apartments, which sounds crazy but think about it...why would they do that on several floors, simultaneously? It was an organized effort...)

I have now toured my school, Maury Elementary, and met my Mentor Teacher (she's the teacher whose classroom I will be sitting in on and teaching in throughout this next semester). Her name is Mrs.Dorsey, she's been teaching 1st grade for 15 years (That's right! I'm in a first grade classroom! YAY!!). The kids in her classroom are darling, and I can't wait to get to know them better. Mrs.Dorsey does NOT mess around. She runs a seriously tight ship (her mom was a teacher too so she's super old school when it comes to the classroom). On my first day of observation one of her kids decided to complete the entire worksheet she had just handed out and he did it wrong. Mrs.Dorsey took his paper, said "No sir, we do not do that in this classroom" ripped it in half and had him get a new one and start all over. I am in for a wild ride, but I am really excited to start learning and teaching and sharing professional perspectives in the classroom with her and the students.

Friday night me and my roomies went to Georgetown, its like a downtown area with shops and restaurants, in Washington D.C. While walking around looking for a place to eat we came across this bridge over a river, with these tree branches reaching over it. I mean it was beautiful, right out of the Disney Movie Princess and the Frog. I'm positive that there was fireflies there later that evening, my roommate said she saw one. We decided to eat at an Italian restaurant called Pablo's (I got Pizza Rustico- it had Italian sausage, goat cheese, mozzarella cheese, caramelized onions and potatoes! It was different but SO GOOD!). When they brought me my food, my pizza had a piece of rosemary on top that had been burned- so it had these glowing embers on it and was smoking a bit. It was SO COOL! I loved it, I had my roommate take pictures of it and I'll upload one soon (just for you Chelle, I know how much you love your food haha). Later that evening we decided to walk down to Georgetown Cupcakes (It's apparently a show on TLC, I've never seen it but my roomies were freaking out about going to it). When we got there it was closed and we were disappointed at first but than a guy appeared out of nowhere. He had overheard us talking about how it was closed and asked if we wanted some free cupcakes. He explained that he packs cupcakes there for a living (he was wearing a Georgetown shirt and waiting outside of the building for a ride home)and he always gets free ones at the end of the night, he said he'd packed himself some but he gets them so often that he gets sick of them and asked if we wanted them. We TOTALLY did! I was so excited I almost hugged him (If his ride hadn't gotten there I totally would have). We looked at them later- 20 cupcakes! Birthday cake, red velvet, chocolate, vanilla and peanut butter chocolate. They were so good! We've been making them last all weekend, we still have 4 left (and seeing as how there's 6 of us and its been 2 days I think we're doing pretty good). It was a great night!

I am loving DC so far. I will upload one or two pictures for each of the above events soon so you guys can see what I'm talking about!!