What's Up Wednesday: Travel Edition!

What’s Up Wednesday is a meme started by the awesome Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk as a way to keep up with your writer/reader/blogger pals in a quick, fun way.  Link up with other participants at Jaime's blog and make sure to leave some comments along the way!

What I’m Reading: 

A lot of different things, actually!  On my Kindle, I've been reading Who I Kissed, and I'm enjoying that.  But we flew to and from New York this week, and I actually prefer paper books on planes because I can read them all through take-off and landing (when I most need to be distracted, as a nervous flyer.)  So on the way in I read Below Stairs, the memoir of a woman who worked as a kitchen maid and cook in big houses in England around the time of Downton Abbey.  It was so much fun I finished it Saturday night!  I won't do a formal review here, but it was a plainspoken, funny, sometimes infuriating account, so if you're interested in that kind of thing I recommend it.  On the way home, I started a collection of old essays by Nora Ephron that I picked up in a bookstore in my old neighborhood, and today I started reading The Awakening, both out of my own interest and because I've been working on ideas for a course or two I'm teaching next year that may involve some feminist criticism.  

What I’m Writing: 

Still adding words to the ol' WiP!  Last week, despite only writing a couple days, I still averaged around 750 words/weekday.  Today I'm back home and shooting for another week with four out of five days over 1000 words--and today is one of them!  I don't have another snippet to share today, but maybe next week once I've been home and had time to pick one out :)

What Else I’ve Been Up To:  

The trip I mentioned!  Mr. S actually got to take some time off of work (only the second time he's taken any days off since he started last summer--the first being two days at Christmas) and we headed back to our old stomping grounds in NYC.  We ate a lot, and saw some friends and family, and DEFINITELY hit up Books of Wonder!  I scored some fun signed books and just generally enjoyed being in the Happiest Place on Earth.

What’s Inspiring Me Now:  

My former students.  The real reason for this trip was to see my students--the ones who were freshmen my first year of teaching, the class I had that whole year, the ones who smelled fresh meat and later told me they were trying to get me to quit, but then couldn't believe that I would leave them two years later: in other words, my babies--graduate from high school.  

I was definitely sad to have missed their senior year, but I was so, so proud of how many of them made it to the finish line.  A few kids in particular, who were my students in some undefinable way, hit big milestones: a few graduated after spending most of HS on the brink of not passing some important classes, while other distinguished themselves tremendously, winning awards and earning fantastic grades.  I was equally proud of them all.  

I'm also inspired by my former colleagues, because I know that getting these kids to where they wound up was not easy, not ever, and I know how dedicated the teachers are at this school.  

So, what's up with you?