August 27, 2009

Thought for the day: “When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it’s time to turn out the lights.” George Burns

By Pete

Pancakes with a delicious plum sauce, a great start to another glorious day. But wait, is that thunder we hear? And rain!! No problem, our illustrious leader has it well in hand. Hardly batting an eye Dorota had our classes all rearranged to the indoors and carried on with the show.

We then discussed the day’s events. Due to the inclement weather the planned baseball was cancelled, a less than democratic vote opted for yet another Will Smith movie to be shown the third and fourth period. Those opposed swallowed hard keeping in mind one of our team goals” “Flexibility.” Before dispersing for our respective classes, some of us decided to take a late afternoon field trip. Zack staying at camp to work on the Friday skit.

Chicken for lunch as we reported our class activities. John’s class did some brain teasers, cut up newspapers to make their own headlines and talked about the Friday skit.
Judy and Ryan class worked on the skit but would not divulge any details; they also did some word puzzles and made some greeting cards for a fellow student.
Dorota was less secretive and led her class in the final preparation of “Joy to the World” and “Yellow Submarine” followed by a fierce game of scrabble.
Kasia and Caroline, the more serious teachers amongst us worked on adjectives, played bingo and finished with an objective word puzzle. The lesson is to find various objects hidden in a picture. Marge challenged her gang with what to take if stranded on a desert island followed by Word Bingo, instead of just calling off letters and numbers she required them to come up with an English word beginning with that letter. Jane’s class played Scrabble until the boys accused the boys of cheating at which the girls dumped the board ! Jane then led a lesson on positive thinking and the importance of a right attitude. Pete’s class is obsessed with the Friday skit. Encouraged by Zack, at one point Pete was politely asked to get out of the camera view and retreated to his room and CNN. The class regrouped for the second period and allowed Pete to conduct a lesson on colloquisms.

Sadly, we had to talk about airport arrangements and the details of departure, just as we were getting to really know our students and their personalities, the bold and the shy, the tall and the small, we are all agreed they are a great bunch and the future of this great country is in good hands.

In the late afternoon after classes and prep, the culturally inclined boarded the bus to see a nearby castle while Dorota dropped off Judy and Caroline in Siedlce where Judy did errands and Caroline visited her dad and grandparents.

We converged at dinner and Judy regaled us with her adventures in town. She actually met a lady with whom she had become acquainted when serving with Global Volunteers at Reymontowka two years ago. The conversation then turned to marriage and life after one loses a spouse. After the ladies gave their various opinions, Jean (John) and Pete declared they would stay with the status quo. To close the evening the students put on a fashion show, what talent these kids have! Just can’t wait for those skits tomorrow.