Mookie: June 2011

Getting ready for China and Long Overdue Updates!

As I am sure everyone knows, I am getting ready to depart for China with the Peace Corps on June 29th. I broke the news to Gage last week and resigned from the Chicago Public Schools. It has been bittersweet because I will miss everyone. These pictures are from a going away party some of the teachers threw for us last week. There are three of us young teachers leaving.

Also, please send me a quick email so I can save everyone's names into my contact list. Some of you I have already, but some I need. My last email account was hacked and in the rush to change my password, I created one that I cannot remember. So my new email address is j.r.ely54@gmail.com. Please say hello. I have a lot of events coming up; graduation, prom, and randomness, so I will post again in the next few weeks. Thanks for looking and sorry these updates are so overdue!

Some of the teachers...

Going to China, Westinghouse, and Med school from left to right. The creativity of the teacher's sign to us demonstrates their desire for us to stay...

My old roommate Kieran 'roasting' us

More teachers

Senior Luncheon

Since I am a senior class rep this year, I get to chaparone all of the fun senior events. This was the most recent, the Senior Luncheon. We went to Navy Pier and took a boat one Lake Mich. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun. Here are some stills.

Chi Skyline

Getting ready to leave

Nancy and I

Dance party!

Chilling on the roof

What a ladies man?

At the end of the pier

Really looking gangster

A couple of my senior volleyball players

Pie-A-Teacher Fundraiser Day

A teacher had a fundraiser to raise money for an end of the year banquet and the students idea was to have Pie-A-Teacher Day. They asked us and for some stupid reason I said yes. Will for sure put that on my list of things to never do again. I smelled like an Ice Cream Store garbage can for a week afterwards....

Gross, Ray's face is classic next to me

The group of idiot teachers who agreed to this mess

At least the students had fun.

BuildOn trips to the Forest

A couple of times this year our Community Service Volunteer club took a group of kids to a forest preserve in the suburbs to cut down buckthorn and pull invasive plants. Here are some images from those two trips.

The students were really impressed with the frogs... Nature :)

Making weed pulling fun!

Small group shot

Large group shot (Kath, look at the camera!)

Kath came and helped out on one of them

Roasting marshmellows over the buckthrown fires

Summer Sox Games...

Just like every other summer, we go to a lot of sox games. Here is the first one we went to this year.

Matt, Cheese, Ben, me, and Todd

Todd, Cheese, Kieran, Matt, me, Kath, and Erik

"Having a couple of drinks." As Granddad likes me to say.

Celebrating the win

Will, me, and Ben

Gage Park Lady Owl Softball 2011

Oh boy, another exciting year of Gage Park Lady Owl Fastpitch softball. It was exciting and action packed, as I am sure you all can imagine. We had three returning players, who had last year as their only expierence and the rest were completely new to the sport, making for some LONG practices and games. They made a lot of progress throughout the year and we actually finished 7-6. AMAZING! Here are some of the images.

Team shot in front of the school

Our Managers (who actually were a bigger pain in the butt than the team)

The team after our first win!

Looking gangster

Prepping

Pregame vs. Fenger. A soccer tourney took priority over us on our own field, so we had to relocate behind the school. Very ghetto... very very ghetto.

So ghetto

Teamwork on three!

SPRING BREAK 2011!!!

For spring break this year I took a two week trip to North Scottsdale Arizona, Keowee Key South Carolina, and Winston-Salem North Carolina. I visited my buddy Kevin Mullen in AZ, Mom Mom and Granddad in SC, and the MacDougals in North Carolina. It was a wonderful trip. I didn't take that many pics, but here are a few...

The Flat Iron in the Superstitious Mountain Range