A little news

After running wild all week, I've finally got a few minutes this afternoon to sit down and give you an update.

First, the adoption-related news. I had an email exchange with Courtney earlier this week. I asked about the agency director's visit to Ethiopia last week. IAN is now officially affiliated with a 3rd orphanage. Yeah! For the kids, this means more opportunities to find a permanent home. For me, this may mean a shorter wait time for my little girl. Not that I'm impatient or anything... Ha! Courtney has promised a more thorough update soon.

The speaker I mentioned in the last post was great. I had no idea what to expect when we scheduled him, but he gave a great presentation. The students really seemed to enjoy it, and so did I. The guy goes by the name of MC Frontalot, and he describes himself as a Nerdcore hip-hop artist. What a funny guy. The next speaker for the year will be in late October. He's from the banking industry and will be talking about current topics of economic interest. That should be quite interesting, given the issues our economy is facing these days.

I had a 2-hr conversation this morning with the book publisher. We went over the reviews of the first chapter and book proposal. Reviews were mixed, as I expected. It's not a big deal-- I'm used to mixed reviews from the student evaluations we have to do every semester. Kids in the same class completely contradict each other. You sort through the opinions, decide what's a reasonable suggestion, and move on. Everyone's got a different philosophy when it comes to teaching this class. The bottom line is that the project is a go! The next phase is a better, more detailed outline of topics to cover in each chapter and an estimate of how many photos, diagrams, and graphs I'd like to include. From there we go to a contract. Neato!