This semester has proven to be quite the adventure. It is my final semester at Utah State in the Deaf Education Masters Program. As required, we must complete a 13 week residential student teaching experience. That means we are sent to a school outside of Utah where the Deaf students live on campus through the week and they go home on the weekends. On January 17, I made the biggest step of my life and left Logan to come to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for my residential school assignment. Many things were terrifying to me, like being assigned to teach middle school English. In my past experiences teaching, I haven't taught anything over the 2nd grade. I've never been to the South, I only knew the two people in my program that also came here. And the drive was almost 26 hours that I was going to complete in two days. I made it safe, and wanted to share my journeys and adventures while I am here.

I saw a lot of really neat things on my way here. It was the first time driving through the canyon to get to Price, I got to see Moab for the first time too. As we made it into Colorado I got to see Mordor (not really, but that's what Chimney Rock looked like to me. At least today)

This is really what our drive looked like through Colorado and New Mexico. Until we hit Albuquerque

This isn't even the full view that I had as I came into Albuquerque. It seemed like a really neat town. Many of the overpasses were lit up with blue, green, and purple lights. After 15 hours of driving, we finally arrived in Amarillo, TX and stayed the night. 

While we were in Texas, we stopped at a rest stop and saw some signs that I have never seen before.

As we were driving through Texas, I started to notice white patches in the dirt. It took me a few fields to realize that we were driving past cotton fields. I have never seen anything like it. Granted, it was just left over cotton from the harvest, so it wasn't a full grown field. We decided to pull off on the side of the road and pick some

Driving through Texas was really a drag. Dallas was quite the adventure because their signs on the freeway are not extremely clear where they want you to go. But we made it through and as we got to the eastern part of the state it started to become more green. When we arrived to Louisiana, we had a really pretty drive on the highway along swamps and trees.

After another 10.5 hours of driving, we made it into Baton Rouge. We crossed over the Mississippi River on what they call "The New Bridge". It was so pretty at night. 

The school is on the outskirts of the main part of the city. I'm really excited to go exploring. This is the sign that is on the road as you pull into the school and what the front of the school looks like. We are a gated area to ensure the students stay safe. 

We share the school with the blind. Campus is on 116 acres! WOW! It has many different buildings, a full track around a football field, a lot of open grass areas (that they don't use because there are snakes) orange trees (which I am excited to go see. We've gotten permission to go pick oranges) and a little river that runs through. They originally told us there were fish, many different birds that come, and river rats. When I heard river rats, I imagined some kind of radiated creepy rat thing that would crawl out of the sewer. But they're just muskrats. They look like beavers. They're kind of neat. I saw one the other day. We also live in a very nice duplex near the gate on the one side of the river, and all the school buildings are on the other side of the river.

I live on the left side. We have a really nice car port and an enormous backyard.

The river from my house and some of the school buildings in the background. This school is called a residential campus. That means any child that lives over 25 miles away from the school can live here during the week. They get released from school an hour early every Friday to be bused home for the weekends. I'll take more pictures of those things later.

These little mini cranes are always here on the river eating. They're really neat.

The inside of my house is really nice. When you walk in from the car port you come into our kitchen. We have a washer and dryer in the closet, a really big fridge, an oven, and a lot of cupboard space.

When you turn right, you look into a very nice dining room with a table and a dish cabinet.

Connected to it at the right is our living room

We have a hallway behind the couch on the right and to the right into the hallway we have a front door and a smaller room that they've turned into an office. 

When you go down the hall we have 2 rooms on the left of the hallway. They are both very decent sized with 2 beds in each room. This house is made to fit up to 6 people in it. This is the empty room. I didn't take a picture of the other one because my roommate is in it

On the right of the hall we have a bathroom and a linen closet.

At the end of the hall is my room. It's technically the master bedroom. It has a walk in closet and a bathroom inside. It's really nice. Excuse my messes, I haven't had time to fully unpack yet.

That is my apartment! When we got in and all settled, we were really hungry and didn't have food (the cafeteria isn't open on the weekends) so we went to a local fried chicken place called Cane's. It comes with fried chicken strips, texas toast, and fries. It was delicious.

That's it for my first day in Louisiana! More adventures to come!