Wow! I just had a really super exciting weekend in St. Louis.

I left to go to St. Louis on Thursday and had two fairly uneventful flights. There was a very exciting moment when I was walking through the terminal in Chicago O'Hare airport and I saw Alec freaking Baldwin walking toward me. I contemplated saying saying something to him but I had about 4 really not cool things pop into my head such as "Hey, you're Alec Baldwin" or "I see you on TV" and none of them seemed appropriate so I just did a double take and kept on walking. It was pretty awesome anyway. Then, the next day we all hear the Alec Baldwin story in the news about the awful voice mail message he left for his 11 year old daughter. I think that makes my sighting even cooler, since Alec is a timely hollywood villian.

I arrived in St. Louis, checked into my hotel room (Hilton in downtown St. Louis...awesome!!!) and started to meet the other Teach For America people. At first it was a bit awkward but it ended up that everybody was excited to be there, eager to meet people and really really friendly. I honestly like everybody. These are my kinds of people! Everybody is smart, funny, nice, and generally not annoying. That might not seem like a compliment, but it is!

On Friday morning I woke up extra super early (5:40am!) because we had to go to local schools for interviews and observations. I saw three schools, the first one was nice, and we observed some TFA teachers (who were fantastic and inspiring). TFA is no longer placing there because of some (huge) problems with the administration there and I am quite relieved. The second school was my favorite. It was a public school with a really supportive principal who seemed to have the same ideology that I have about being a teacher. He is hoping to somehow figure out a way to get rid of his current staff and fill his school with TFA teachers. I would like to work with him regardless but he may not have any openings...or he might have a whole school. It's all up in the air. The final interview was for a charter school, well, three to be exact, and they are all brand spankin new so they will be needing a ton of teachers. I felt my interview went well, and I thought the principal was good, however, I am still not entirely sold on the idea of charter schools.

Later on friday we went on a tour of different St. Louis neighborhoods (for housing purposes) and then went to dinner at a TFA corps members house for a big meet 'n greet shin dig. While we were meeting in the lobby of our hotel for our rides to the events we saw none other than Evander Holyfield walk in and sit down on the couch right next to us. (!!!) By the way, his ear looks fantastic. A couple corps members went and said hello but I decided to hang back since I don't particularly care about meeting Mr. Holyfield or not.

Later that evening a group of us all met in the lobby and went out to a "dueling piano bar" aka "my own personal hell." It was only about 8 blocks from the hotel so we decided to walk. We got a block away from the hotel and we heard three loud popping noises. Somebody said, "Do you think that was fireworks or a gun?" Being young, naieve and optimistic somebody joked that it was probably an explosion of safety. We get to the end of the block, our group is being led by three guys, who look down the street and start screaming, "those were gunshots, everybody get back!" We all start running and have no idea what to do. I don't know why, but people were very adamant about going to the dueling piano bar and so we hopped in the cabs, which drove us past the scene of the incident where we see about 20 police cars and tons of police, all with thier guns drawn, some with assault rifles. It's really scary and strange. I mean, we all heard that St. Louis was ranked the most dangerous city in America but we all took that with a grain of salt. In case you are as curious as I was - here is a link to the news story about the incident...which occurred only 2 blocks from where we were walking. Eeek! I manage to live in OTR for 2 years and never see anything scary only to come to St. Louis for a weekend and encounter THIS!?