The Adventure Continues...

The adventure begin again on Saturday February 23, at 8 am. I had my friend Liz joining me for the ride to Massachusetts. The first day of driving went very smooth. We went to a great resturaunt in Clevend, Ohio. It was called Melts Bar and Grill. It was a resturaunt that made various grilled cheese sandwiches. I got a grilled chicken and sharp cheddar sandwich. Liz got a perogie grilled cheese sandwich. The food was delicious and the homemade fries were amazing. We stopped for the night in Williamsport, PA. We stayed with friends and Liz, and they were lovely people. We spent the evening just hanging out and checking out the local hot spots. We were back on the road the next morning. The drive was surprisingly smooth. We hit some winter weather in Hartford, CT, but nothing to terrible. We made it to Charlton and parted ways.

It was a good feeling to be back at Natures Classroom, as well as being at an awesome new site. I'm living in a small house with Retha and our roommate Paul. Once we were all moved in we spent the evening hanging out as a new staff. Everyone is pretty cool and have a lot of experience working here at natures classroom.

Our first week here we had staff training. We learned some new classes and brainstormed on how to improve programming for our season. The site is looking beautiful all covered in snow and we all excited for the children to arrive. Our first group comes on Tuesday of this week. I will be sleeping in for the week. ( I will live with the kids and be a chaperone to them.)

This past weekend I started my part time job for the Girl Scouts. I worked a glow in the dark lock in. We started the evening at 6pm Saturday and worked until 6 am on Sunday. I did team building workshops for the evening. It was a lot of fun, despite the lack of sleep I revived. I'm looking forward to the coming week and am ready to get back in the swing of things.

Last Week of the Season

Well, the end of the fall season has arrived. It turned out to be a really good week. We had 36 6th graders. They came from a Jewish school in Massachusetts. The week for all of started out a it rough. The students were very chatty and had troubles listening. Part of the problem was that they were all grouped with their friends.
One of my students was particularly challenging, her name was Zuzzie. She was from a very wealthy family, but not very attentive family. She was on a strong medication for ADHD and her parents pulled her off of it the day before she came to camp. Normally one would be weaned off of it over several months. For this reason she was having withdrawal symptoms as well as acting strangely. For example, one day during field group she turned into a chicken for awhile. It was strangely realistic. She quickly adopted me as her mother this week and often ended up in my classes whether she signed up for them or not.
Thankfully as a whole the last 2 days of field group went well. One night we even had a pj fashion show with all the girls. They also had wonderful teachers with them. This was the schools first time coming to natures classroom, and they really loved it. On the last day they had a ceremony for all of the natures classroom teachers. It was there version of a Jewish graduation/thank you. All of the students made us pictures with our names, pictures, and the qualities they loved about us.

In other news, I am currently on the road. I picked up my mom today from the airport and we began the drive. Today we stopped in York, PA. For the most part the drive went well. We didn't get lost in the confusion of New York and Jersey! Tomorrow we will finish the drive to Michigan. I am looking forward to being home for awhile.

As usual, here a few pictures from the week:

My Trip to New Hampshire

Well this adventure starts out on my day off, Monday. Retha and I decided to take advantage of the fact we didn't have to work that day. We decided to take a little trip to Maine, it was kind of on the way to the place we were working during the week. We left early Monday morning and took of to Kittery, Maine, home of the Kittery Trading Post. Which is a store that has many outdoor odds and ends you might need. Retha and I had a good time trying on different random hats and taking pictures with the stuffed moose all over the store.

After we left it was about lunch time. So as most do, we found some seafood. I had fish and chips, it was a delicious meal. From there we took another adventure to see Mt. Washington and the white mountains. They are near Conway, New Hampshire. The were gorgeous. Here are some pictures of them for you all to see.

This is Mount Washington

Me in my amazement of the mountains

From there we headed to the beautiful Freedom, New Hampshire. I was working at our natures classroom site located right on Lake Ossipee. It was amazing to wake up every morning walk out the door and have an amazing view of the lake and the mountains situated behind it. I know it's not the same but heres a picture for you all to see.

 This picture was taken at only 3:30 on the afternoon. It got dark there around 4:30/5. It was a little weird to get used too. It was also extremely cold this past week. Most days the high was only about 40 degrees. We had a group of 200 8th graders this week, who didn't care for the cold either. I got fairly lucky though, my field group was pretty awesome. They enjoyed just hiking around and seeing what there was to see. So we went and saw an old airstrip that was used during WW2 and a we went to a place called Jackman's Ridge, which gives you a lovely view of the White Mountains.  Here are pictures from those places too.

This is the view from Jackman's Ridge

This is a pictures of my students walking the old airstrip.

So as you can see we also got a bit of snow this week as well. We woke up thursday morning to a nice white blanket on the ground. Most of it went away due to the rain we had the rest of the day. It was a good week for the most part.

When I got back to Charlton on Friday night, we found out they got snow too. They had 7.5 inches of snow to be exact. Thankfully the past two days have been nice and sunny, so most of the snow is gone.
My last week here is about to start. We have kids coming Tuesday-Friday, and thankfully I will be teaching here.

Another Make Work Week

Well its certainly been a long week. We had no school scheduled for this past week, so we worked maintenance. Due to the hurricane, it turns out all of the Natures classroom sites were closed as well. On our property we have 2 sites, so we got to hang out with the staff from the other site. It was a lot of fun, and I made some new friends. Our tasks this week were painting the dining hall and raking leaves. Raking one field took 2 1/2 days.

As I said, we got very lucky during the hurricane. It essentially was just a big wind storm. We had some fallen branches, but no flooding. We lost power, but thankfully it was only for a day and half. I talked to grandma smith and she said next time we should let her come out and make my bed.

This past weekend, has been awesome. I came home with Retha for the weekend. Yesterday we went to an ultimate frisbee tournament for the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. It's been nice to take a break from hanging out with everyone on site at Charlton. Today we are just hanging out and relaxing before we have to head back to work.

This coming week, we have a small group coming to our site. We only have enough kids for 3 of our teachers to stay. So I will be teaching at a site in New Hampshire. We are going to have a group of 200 8th graders, and they'll be staying there for 4 days. it should be quite an interesting experience. I am just hoping I will be back in Charlton for our final week of having kids.

Well I shall be home in 14 days! I am looking forward to seeing all of you around the table for Thanksgiving!

Sunday Funday!

Well we certainly had an interesting week. We had a split week. Our first group came M-W, the second W-F. As one group arrived the other group left. It was a bit crazy.

In my first field group i had some interesting characters. One, Andrew, was from Egypt. He has only lived here for about 2 months. He would constantly say things like "What is this thing called deer? We do not have that in egypt." or "What are we doing? I want to hunt and kill animal." He was funny though.

I also had Colin. He was autistic and he was very precious. We did our underground railroad simulation this week, and the teachers decided colin should be in the safe house with myself and Retha. This way he would not be uncomfortably scared. So he played the role of the deputy and had a blast. At one point he leaned over to me and said "This is awesome!"

The second field group I had we didn't really get to spend a lot of time together. I had 15 minutes with them on the first day, 2 hours on the second, and and hour on the last. (Normally we have at least an hour and half per day.) But they were very good and had a lot of fun building a fire.

As usual, here are some pics from the week:

On saturday we had a wedding here  on site and i went to the reception. It was for 2 ladies that work in the office. It was really interesting. They had a formal lunch, which I did not go to, and then a reception/party afterwards. The theme of the reception was halloween. So I felt very overdressed amongst the halloween costumes everyone was wearing. It was fun though.

Today we had sunday fun day here at the green house. Most of took a trip to six flags, new england. It was so much fun. There were not very many people there, so we did not have to wait in any lines. We rode every roller coaster in the park. It was pretty great! They were having a halloween theme, so I did get cased by zombies as I was leaving. That was really the only not fun part. Here are a couple pics from the park:

A crazy loud week

This past week was sure interesting. We had a group of sixth graders from a school called Millis. As a whole group they were crazy, but as small groups they were awesome. I had my most active and energetic field group yet. We did a lot of hiking and games to help them when they had to stay focused. They were also all loud naturally and liked to sing. You could always here us coming from a mile away. Their favorite activity was playing camouflage and building fires. We had a lot of fun telling stories a lot too. We would find a spot to sit and just listen to each others stories. Heres a pic of them sitting on hill at a spot called hemlock falls. 

Also, as always I will share the evaluation picks of the week. I had a lot of good quotes from them this week.

One of the most memorable students from this week was a students named Murrell. He was a student who stood out for many reasons, and had troubles making friends with kids. He was totally unaware of where he was in relationship to the others around him, he sang all the time, and would randomly blurt out whatever it was that he was thinking. In fact one day he was dancing and didn't notice that I was standing right next to him... and accidentally hit me in the face. He really stood out at our TNL night though. He was very funny during our skit and had all the kids laughing.

I am looking forward to the week coming up. I am teaching some cool classes. Just to remind you I am teaching:

Shark Dissection

Jelly-Belly-ology

Deer Survival (This is an ecology simulation, I am teaching it as a double with Retha)

Grossology- A class about the human body when your sick

Its going to be what we call a split week. We will have two groups, one group is staying mon.-wed. and the other is staying wed.-fri. Hopefully its a smooth transition between the two. It's also midseason evaluation week as well. Heres hoping I get a good one. 

It was nice Skyping with most of you yesterday and I look forward to seeing you all soon. 

Good Friends

This past week was a short one. The school I was with was here for wednesday, thursday, and friday. They were a montessori school, they were 3,4,5th years. They were very precious!! I worked mostly with the 4th and 5th years. My group was obsessed with finding salamanders. So basically thats what we did this week. I also wrote a new class (which I may get paid for once I submit it) about electrical circuit for the kids this week. They really liked it.

As I had mentioned, I had heard Rubina was a bit crazy. She was not really. She was a very nice lady. She was unable to fill out an evaluation this week. She did however say " I shall request you like I do Rebecca next year."

The joke of the week was "They'll do it when there are ready." Part of the montessori philosophy is letting the children do thing on their own time. They were generally late and sometimes had a hard time with the word no.

This next week we have large group of 6th graders coming. I am teaching jelly-belly-ology, eye dissection, megastructures, deer survival, and inside out kid. I am also going to hosting Thursday Night Live with the kids this week. It should be fun.

This past weekend I was suppose to be working and then go to Boston today. However I have come down with a cold. So I spent yesterday sleeping and watching movies. However I have amazing friends here. They came in to see how I was doing, brought me saltines, and ginger ale! It was awesome.

Also, recent news about the truck: It does in fact need a new transmission. At first I was not going to do but then we talked to Terry. He said it was a worth while price for they need to do. So in order to help me afford it I am going to apply for a credit card. Hopefully it works out, because I love my truck, and I do not want a new car.

Finally, I have discovered that I will in fact be at the table for thanksgiving dinner. I will be home on the 18th of November. So I will see you all then.