May 9th

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! You made it to Friday! Was it only me, or was this a really long week for you too?

There’s not going to be a writing challenge today, and probably not tomorrow either. Heck, there might not even be a blog post tomorrow, we’ll see.

Today I’m going with Dani, and her science class, on a class trip to Duke’s Estate. For the morning session, we will be on an ecological scavenger hunt in the North side of the estate. They have to use a map to find a dozen or so things and then snap a photo of it with their phone or digital camera. Is it just me, or do you think it’s a little presumptuous to assume every child has a phone or a digital camera?

What if some kids cannot afford a phone, or the family only has one camera and they cannot use it, or what if their phone is broken? Does the kid fail the test then? This has been a major pet peeve of mine – if something is required, then the entity requiring said item, should provide said item. (ie: insurance…but we won’t go there again.)

Then in the afternoon, after a forty five minute

lunch, we will be around the welcome center, answering eleven questions. The teacher showed us the questions yesterday, and I remember one was about the bathrooms at the center, and how they were different than most public bathrooms, and how the waste removal system was different. There was one more part to the question, but I can’t remember what it asked. I flipped through, and it appeared all the questions had three parts to them.

Both the scavenger hunt and the eleven questions count as test grades, and the kids have an hour and forty five minutes to finish each section. I’ll admit, science was not my strongest subject (except for physics, but that class rocked, so I didn’t consider it science), so I don’t know how much help I’d be able to give these kids if they needed it. Hopefully they won’t need much help, and the teacher basically told us, we are there to keep them out of trouble or report them if they do get into trouble.

Supposedly last year, some kid stripped down to his skivvies and jumped into a lake on the estate. He probably would have gotten away with it, but the dingy posted it on Facebook, and the teacher found out. I’m going to tell the kids right from the get go, that unless I think they are in physical danger or are about to cause someone else to be in danger, they are not going to hear boo from me. They are allowed to be kids, have fun, be silly, as long as they are respectful to the property and to each other…and don’t post anything stupid.

The reason there may not even be a blog post tomorrow, is the girls and I are leaving at six tomorrow morning and driving out to Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. A family friend is graduating college, and we are going out there to see her commencement ceremony. It’s a three and a half hour drive, graduation is at ten, should last between an hour and a half and two hours, hopefully we’ll grab some lunch with Lisa and her family, and then we’re turning around and coming home. It’s going to be a long day, but so worth it. She is the sweetest girl, and I am so proud of her.

Okay, I got to boogie. Please do me a favor, say a little prayer the weather holds out, because if we need to do this during a downpour, we’ll all be miserable. I hope you have a fabulous day, and happy writing!