Birthday in Villa de Leyva

This past weekend I was in Villa de Leyva again to celebrate a good friend and fellow science teacher's 50 birthday. I hiked every day. It was glorious. Hiked to some huge waterfalls. Hiked to the ruins of a 350 year old church and found some Llamas inside. The invite for people not staying over was "come at 9am for pancakes, stay until 9pm for dancing", the idea being that people would be gone by 10pm. Well several showed up at 9:40pm so it went a little longer than expected. But of course, good and interesting people, good times, and dancing in the kitchen. Can't much beat that.

Just rollin' along

Greetings avid readers.

You'd think that having 1/2 decent internet access at home would cause me to post more on this darn thing but it doesn't seem to be working that way. Now I'm just splitting my decreasing degree of free time between more electronic options. Yes I'm talking about youtube, facebook, along with all of the random show downloading. I'm certainly not spending as much time just sitting in the hammock as last year..... a good and bad thing I suppose.

Michael whupped me in zappo today (zappo means "toad"). It's a game where you throw metal rings and try and get them into holes for points. If you get one in the pewter toad's mouth it's big bonus points. We were playing to 500 and I lost by 300. I'm not sure how that's even possible but what are you gonna do. Maybe I'll start practicing every day.

I'm jealous of -40 degrees

Ok, I know that I don't have to worry about converting from degrees F to C when it gets really cold.

Technology is still finding new ways to connect people. I recently got sent a link to a youtube video of my family members skating on a smooth-as-glass lake superior. Perfect skating as far as the eye can see. Incredible. Getting a video from home was heartwarming too.

Here's the link if you want to check it out. Make sure to check out the kite skating as well. That one REALLY made me jealous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pluvRYvWgs

Another Lazy Sunder Afternoon at School

Another lovely Sunday at school. Today I've made sure to bring my external hard drive so I've got about 40 Gigs of music to choose from.

I've had my students doing machine projects in science class and their big science fair is coming up on tuesday. I've really enjoyed doing projects but I'm going to be glad for them to be over for a little while. I'm in my room surrouded by the sounds of hammering, yelling, and marble rolling for every break, lunch, and for about two hours after school. It's good stuff but I'm ready for a change. I'll try to post some pics of the machines that they are making in the near future.

I've gotten hooked on the HBO show Deadwood and I just found out that one of my friends here is not only really into the show, but had stopped watching at the exact point that I'm at (This is a good opportunity for someone to tell me that it must be the hand of fate).

For those that don't know, I have a bad habit of being cranky with people who see fate where I see coincidence. Maybe they're right but I have not yet been convinced. I think that something rediculously unlikely could happen to me and I would still only see coincidence.

Am I too skeptical for my own good? Please tell me what you think.

Let's turn this into a fun game. Give Matt one brutally honest life-makeover tip. It can be about anything from hairstyle to beliefs about existence. That's a pretty broad category.