Friday October 23

School started as usual with the independent study and opening exercises where we discuss idioms using rock analogies “rock and a hard place”, “two birds with one stone” and “blood from a stone”. I did the story time and helped with the music and then went to find my friend Abby who comes down from Oaxaca on Fridays to work in the office. We had discussed tentative plan for me to visit Oaxaca and stay with Abby and her husband Nate who I had gotten to know last year when I was here. She was going home on the bus at the end of the day and said I was welcome to accompany her. I thanked her and told her I had decided to accept that offer.

I went back to the class and for the rock lessons we continued trying to test methods that the Stonehenge builders might have used. We had dragged large stones attached to spring scales across different surfaces like cardboard and ice but had not tried rollers. We found that ice which was not available to the Egyptians but was available at Stonehenge offered the least resistance. We then tried building our own personal “Stonehenges” with dominoes to see what some of the other problems may have been. Kathy asked me to take over play practice which I was happy to do for the last half hour.

At lunch time I packed for my weekend excursion and got ready for gym class. On Friday Coach Josh does not come so I took over for him and refereed the street hockey games for both the older and younger groups. I could not resist when asked to substitute in the second game so was warm and sweaty and needed to get a good cleaning up before walking down to catch the bus for Oaxaca. I had lost my water bottle but was able to get a bottle of water at a little store right by the bus stop. Carrying my suitcase down the rocky streets to the main road made the cool 5 peso bottle of water even more necessary. Mexican busses are always an adventure I enjoy. You get to see real people and hear them talking. Sometimes busses are almost empty and sometimes you can hardly move a muscle you are packed in so tightly. We took one bus into the city and another to the other side of Oaxaca after a walk of one or two blocks. The busses have several banners displayed on the curb side of the windshield and you not only need to know where you want to go but which bus will get you there more quickly. We let some Santa Rosa busses pass even though that was where we were going because Abby knew that they would take the long way. Fares in Oaxaca are four and one half pesos so I like to have a ten peso coin and get one peso in return for two fares. There are actually half-peso coins in common use and a tenth-peso coin which I have only heard about. The bus in the city grew more crowded until I practically had my knee near my chin because I had my small suitcase in front of me and there was no place for my foot in the aisle. By the time we had to get off though the bus had several empty seats.

After leaving the bus we climbed the hill which gets steeper and steeper the farther you walk. The rough cement roadway is grooved I surmise for traction and I was sure I would lose a wheel on the suitcase. We arrived at the gate and as Abby unlocked it I spotted Nate in the front yard which had just been freshly mowed. After his warm greeting we all went inside for a Friday night pizza supper and a great evening of conversation and catching up on some events of the past year like their trip to Montana and my trip to Cameroon including slide shows of course. I was able to hook right in to their WI-fi and while Nate was waiting to for his son to call I downloaded a computer calling program and made my first Skype call to Montana before turning in. After such a busy day I was happy to climb the spotless tile stairway to the beautiful guest room and to turn in for the night. A cool breeze was coming through the slider out to the balcony and after taking a few night pictures of the lights of the city below I fell quickly to sleep.

Thursday October 22

The trouble with not doing your blog every day is that sometimes you can’t remember much from that day. Such is the case for Thursday. What I remember well is that I was too tired to blog that night and once Friday hit things picked up speed at an enormous rate. Thursday night I did take time to do a word find of geological terms. Thursday Paul came over to the school to work on another computer so he installed the wireless printer on my computer so now I can print from anywhere in the wireless network. For reading time I read a silly tale of an ox with rocks in his sox which gave me a great chance to use dramatic voices and try to read long strings of Seuss type tongue twisters. That was fun for all of us. Melinda the music teacher has been out with a sore throat so I have been helping some of our young helpers work with the younger group. I even brought my computer down to play a version I have of “I Go to the Rock” since none of our musicians knew that one.

We did a demonstration out on the sandy volley ball court. I had a medium sized rock shaped something like Chimney Rock which I buried in a pile of sand. I asked the kids what erosion was and they decided that it was soil washing away. I asked them to blow on the “mountain” and then suggested as the sand began to move that wind can also cause erosion. We then proceeded to shower it with “rain” and watch the “rivers” wash the silt into fan shaped “deltas” at the base of the mountain and soon the buried rock began to appear. Soon the mountain was washed away and the rock formation was clearly visible. After that we practiced our stone soup skit for the final program. The morning finished up with a canyon to color. The river at the bottom illustrated erosion and the layers were to be colored in various colors.

As I headed for our noontime teachers meeting I smelled some cooking aromas. The older kids were making “metamorphic rock” by putting trail mix into pancake batter and checking for the effects of heat and pressure before devouring the results. I brought some of my Ghirardelli chocolate chips in and tried them in my experiment. They melted but still tasted very good.

After gym in the afternoon I came home and took a rest made some pasta for supper but was still too tired to blog.