Miss Missa on the road: Training Day 9

Today was another long (but good) day. The post-migraine "hangover" from yesterday has mostly cleared, my Venice Beach blister has healed, and my leg muscles now forgive me for walking up the hill repeatedly. It was already 15 degrees (C, of course) when I left to walk down to the RIE Center, so my jacket stayed strapped to the backpack today! I stopped for breakfast along the way (for a break form bagels and cream cheese!) but that proved to be a mistake because the place lost my order or gave it away to the drive thru customers and what should have been a three-minute stop took almost 15, but I was only a couple of minutes late for my class. Ho hum.

We chatted through some terms, and spent a large portion of the day talking through (and watching videos of) conflicts that arise between infants or between infants and their caregivers, and how to handle them sensitively so that the children on both sides of it can learn from the experience without coming away feeling shamed or victimised. It's a tricky thing, knowing when and how to intervene in conflicts between children (especially siblings!), and the wrong type or level of intervention can cause things to escalate, or can rob the children of a sense of resolution so that they have to keep coming back to recreate that conflict over again.

It has been such a gift getting to know these passionate and caring ladies during the past couple of weeks, and it will be hard to say goodbye tomorrow when it's time for us to go our separate ways.

After chatting with most of the class over a beer (wine, coffee, tea...), and ranting together about the plight of the North American public school student with a couple of people, I finally made it to In N Out Burger, and can confirm that the fries are inferior to New York Fries, but superior to KFC. I have two new roommates who apparently like to go to bed early (or are exhausted from travelling). I sure hope they will forgive me for rummaging around in the morning to get myself ready to go, since I didn't have a chance to turn the lights on and do it tonight!