Amanda Takes Off...

"You Need Formula!"

"Oh, My Wife..."

At dinner tonight, Good Man was unimpressed by my sketching out some weekly plans on paper. He insisted I should use Excel. I told him I'd use Notepad and he just about died in his seat.

Good Man and I just walked for six miles through rain, wind, freezing rain, and some snow.

Now, this was nothing like the Halloween Blizzard I trick-or-treated through in '91. But snow. In Virginia. In October. What in the world?

Now I think I'm going to make some hot cocoa.

At a lot of schools, each grade has their own special field trip. The farm in kindergarten, Jamestown in fourth grade, that sort of thing. At my school we don't really have a special field trip for third grade. I decided I wanted to see if we could turn Great Falls into our third grade thing.

Black Vultures

We went on our field trip yesterday, when it was rainy, cool (but not cold), and a little gross. The kids had a great time and the teachers enjoyed it, too (although having to navigate freaked most of the teachers out).

Rain

Since I had my intern and some parents to cover my class, I worked with the students from another class. I taught them how to "read" the blazes and they did an excellent job of navigating. It was neat to see how quickly they picked up the idea of blazes!

Taking Flight

Mason's Mark

The students were really interested in how moss didn't grow on all sides of the trees, and how the fungi were a different color depending on its location on the tree.

Fungi

One of the local Fire and Rescue teams was out. They appeared to be practicing, which was quite exciting for the students.

Fire and Rescue

Mather Gorge

Red

From the Bridge

Pine Tree

One nice thing about the rain was that we had a lot of low clouds and fog and it made for some good pictures!

Mather Gorge II

Great Falls

Ant Village Seoul

On August 11th, Mother and I went to 개미 마을 (literally "Ant Village") in Seoul. Ant Village is one of the old "moon towns," build high in the hills in Seoul.

The area is poor and underdeveloped compared to other areas of Seoul, even compared to the immediate surrounding area. Development in the area has been restricted, and several years ago, art students painted murals in the area.

Mother didn't know about the area, nor did any of her friends. I was a bit uncomfortable walking around, taking photos, for reasons I can't quite put into words. But I really was interested in documenting what I saw.

Art Imitating Life

Grandfather

Sunflowers

Good Man put together something from IKEA for me. Midway through he said, "Oh, by the way, I am using this to stop the hammer from scratching." I looked up and noticed that he had pounded holes into one of my nice cloth napkins.

"Why didn't you use one of the cotton rags?"

"Oh. I don't know."

What could I do but laugh?

"That house is decked out for Halloween," I said, pointing to a house whose yard was covered in fake webs, spiders, and pumpkins.

"Why all the spider webs?"

"Because they're spoo-oo-ooky," I said.

"Why not have Spiderman Day?" Good Man wondered out loud, "Well, I guess then you would need Batman Day, Darth Vader Day, Star Trek Day..."