More rainy days at the Bolivar

Well, my last update was about a rainstorm and we just had another huge one the night before last AND today. Two days ago it happened in the early evening, accompanied by crazier lightning than I’ve seen in years and the power went off. That meant that instead of making chicken parmesan in the oven (Jordan, my roommate was cooking for me, himself, his girlfriend Patricia and our other friend Regan) we had chicken sandwiches done over the gas burner. It’s funny, I could still have a hot shower when the power is off, I just couldn’t see while I was doing it.

So I started the today soaked as I ran through the rainstorm from the teacher bus to my classroom. On the plus side I just love rainy days and the kids are a lot more mellow when it’s raining outside. Right now at school we are starting our major group projects for the simple machines unit. The kids will be building Rube Goldberg Machines (anyone familiar with the Rube Goldberg Cartoons??) where the make a machine that accomplishes a simple task (swatting a fly, turning off an alarm clock) in as many complicated steps as possible using pulleys and levers, mousetraps, hoses, springs etc. Think ‘Mousetrap’ game, if you’ve ever seen it. Should be fun. I’m still so amazed what a distinct personality each of the different classes of kids has. You’d think that by the time you put 20 different kids in a room the differing personalities start averaging out but that really doesn’t happen at all. Some of them focus easily on some things, others won’t….. some understand certain concepts while others will struggle. They very distinct.
There’s traveling in the air! Mom and Dad will be leaving for their month and a half long adventure in a couple of days and Emily (if you haven’t heard the good news) is coming down to visit me for three weeks at the end of March!