Monday October 26

The day dawned a bit cloudy but was soon sunny. For rocks today we experimented with chocolate chips. The idea was to pretend that the chips were examples of little rocks. It was sort of a mixed analogy but we placed several milk chocolate chips in one bag, the same of white chocolate in another and butterscotch in a third. With those ingredients it is almost impossible for an experiment to fail. The idea was to apply warmth and pressure from your hand and squeeze them into a blob. The blob was put on a sheet of wax paper and pressed into a layer (of rock). One by one the three layers were built into an example of sedimentary rock. Then the layers were put in a plastic bag and immersed in ice water to cool and harden the “rock”. When all the concepts were thoroughly assimilated a lesson reinforcing tasty treat was enjoyed by us all. Uses of rocks were taught in another lesson. Do you like to eat rocks? Well our food would be a little tasteless without salt crystals. Gluing some sand to paper also illustrated how it could be used in a variety of ways for making things smooth or taking off old paint (from your pencil).
Our Stone soup play practice ended the AM session.

For lunch I decided to have the rest of my enchilada from the restaurant on Sunday. I steamed it for several minutes in a large pot. I don’t have a microwave so that is what I do. When I opened the package it was not my enchilada but half of Abby’s omelet. It was very good. I thought later I could have put it in the freezer and given it to her Friday. By the time I thought of it, it was gone! For the afternoon Gym session we had water day. We played games with water balloons such as balloon toss and a relay race where the first person ran down and got a water balloon from the bucket and came back and broke it on the other team. The second person could not leave until the balloon had burst. We had a good time but were not as wet by the end of the day as I had expected.

After dark, it comes about 6:00 PM now; I walked over to town for some produce. On the way back I stopped for a Magnum bar. The dark chocolate and the vanilla ice cream combined to make a perfect hors d’oeuvre. While the stuff was soaking I made a light supper.

Tuesday October 27

With the time change I have been waking up earlier and then I usually can get a start-your-day-right call to Montana. Such was the case today. At school I read to the children about the eruption of Mt. Pelee in Martinique. That was a ghastly story but I adlibbed a little to soften some of the gory details. For rocks studies I had duct taped a film container to a piece of cardboard for each student. Their job was to take clay and build a mountain around it so we could put some baking soda and red vinegar in it to simulate a volcanic explosion. We did well to finish as much as we did and we will try them out tomorrow. The students worked on a word find and I instructed a little about what part they would have in the closing program. I need to write those parts out tonight so they have time to learn them before Friday.

During Gym this afternoon a small marching band came up the narrow road on the other side of the school. I often hear them but never get to see them. I walked half way across the field and tried a long shot video. Some of the members saw me and waved. We are getting close to Day of the Dead and there is a lot of music and fireworks to celebrate. After school I walked over town to see if I could get some Thank You cards in Spanish at the Christian book store. I started by saying my Spanish was very bad and after several minutes of looking the proprietor and I decided she did not have exactimente que querero. I walked up to the papelaria (stationery store). My poor grasp of the language got me introduced to a young woman who spoke English but did not help me find any thank you notes in Spanish. I stopped in another store for some grape juice and managed to get the right amount of money out for the purchase. That is always better than holding out a handful of money and letting the vendor choose. After I returned home I designed my own cards on the computer and had supper. I printed a sample card and then went over to the school to get it off the printer. By that time of night the gate to the Center is locked on this side of the street and the gate to the school yard is locked on the other side of the rocky dirt road. The card sample came out looking good so I can print some more tomorrow.