Cockroaches

Yesterday was my best day as a teacher so far. I know, I know, no students yet so they are all good days (haha!) but I got to work in my room for 9 hrs and it felt good, and it feels like my room now! Angela helped me so much and I made 2 friends! This was pretty exciting, they are both first year teachers just like me and we went through induction together and our rooms are all in the same hallway. It's great. We boosted each other up and gave each other hugs and our phone numbers.
And then the day took a turn.
Angela and I went back to school after dinner and continued working. We were alone in the building and it was dark for the most part. I wanted to get my first activity for the first day of school all set before we left for our four day weekend and that required making copies of the crest I am going to have all the students fill in, and we needed to make an overhead transparency. So we went to the copier room. It was dark and we unlocked the door and I kicked something as I reached for the light, I looked down to see I'd actually kicked 2 things: the doorstop and a giant cockroach. I screamed a little, Ang screamed a lot and jumped and we were both freaked out. He ran around in circles for a bit under a table and I was the lookout while Ang made my copies. He was about as big and as long as my thumb with giant antenna - just a big bug. I named him Fred but then changed his name to Joe (Fred is one of our janitors and we love Fred so the name didn't fit). Joe eventually ran under the copy machine and we hurried up our work. I sat on the counter and Ang stood in the middle of the room while the machine ran.
Then she took the copies to the other counter, by the sink, to stack them when she screamed - not quietly mind you but SCREAMED! She ran out of the room and I looked over and there was Joe's friend peeking out of the sink. Apparently he had climbed right up on her arm. She said never in her life had she ever almost peed her pants, until right then. I took another look at Joe's friend, grabbed our stuff and slammed the door. Wondering how many more of them there were.
We knew there were cockroaches in the school, they had bug bombed this summer and the week before there had been a row of dead cockroaches in this darker hallway. We had joked that it was a great sight to see, especially since our school is where induction was held - where all 65 of the brand new teachers come on their first day of work and where the big wigs come to be introduced. But we didn't know there were still live ones.
Needless to say, we didn't stay very long after that. I got my room picked up and we left at 9:30, much to Angela's delight. She had a very long night after that. I had to make some cinnamon ice cream to get her calmed down.
She has devised a plan though - she's never going in the copier room again. She's going to get all that she needs copied together every Monday morning and leave it on our boss's desk, the principal. At least until she's assured there are no more cockroaches in the building.
I was pretty freaked out by them too - I've never seen a live cockroach in all my 28 years. But I was a bit fascinated by them too. I kept sneaking looks at them. And this morning I googled them, and found out they can bite, they can't grow to be more than a quarter of a pound big, and people write poems about them. Yep, you can find just about anything on the internet.
So yeah. Cockroaches. What more can I say. Come visit!