The First Real Week

Despite having been told by the librarian that due to my strictness I am at least a couple of the kids' least favorite teacher, I think today was pretty awesome.  (Let's ignore that it is very strange that he asked the kids that question in the first place, but also that he then told the entire teacher's lounge the answer, and continued even though I told him I didn't want to hear about it.)

 That's right.  Those are the lyrics to "What's Going On," by Marvin Gaye.  Today in my 9th grade music class, we listened to this and talked about the song meaning.  They wanted to sing, too, so I let them try to sing along.  It was mostly them confused and starring at me, though.

 I started doing projects in Art today, too!  Last time I lectured about the oldest art we've found thus far, so this time they made some using the same methods.  That is, they got water and food coloring in their mouth (stand-in for the ground up bone or charcoal or mineral deposits) and using their hand as a stencil, spit the "paint" onto the paper (stand-in for the cave wall).  Some of them look really great.  One of the kids got the technique down pat and I guess they were talking about it in their other classes.  They were really into it.

In my Environmental Science class, we made camouflage butterflies.  They did an amazing job, as you can see in the pictures.  I had another one of the teachers come in to try to find as many as he could in two minutes, and he could only find five out of 21.  Unfortunately, it used up a bunch of my time, but at least they had fun.  Besides, I need to take some time in that class.

The windows were open all day (until it started pouring), and this guy just hung out.  And on the day we did the butterfly activity, too.  I'm taking this to be a very good sign.

This past Sunday we went to a restaurant in a neighboring town called Catacamas for lunch.  In Catacamas, there are all sorts of places that are restaurant-pools, so you just chill and eat and then go to the pool as an all day thing.  We just ate, but there was a tiny petting-zoo sort of area attached.  There was this amazing, friendly monkey that was apparently starved for attention that hung all over me.  It was pretty amazing.  I actually can't really explain how amazing.  And she or he gave me little love nibbles.  It was just sad because she was chained to a tree with a leash around her neck.  So, I am still morally against it, despite how cool it was.  I also made friends with a duck that day.  Regular Dr. Doolittle over here.