it is cold! -36°C. there is no wind, what a relief. nalu's rope clasp keep freezing shut, and it takes me a few moments of near-frostbite for the warmth of my fingers to make it release. wind would make it insane. right now I can just get away with not wearing long underwear for the 4-minute walk to school. brrr.
nalu is totally in her element. she eats her food - no, inhales her food - and then she's begging to go out again. fiona... she's a bit more tentative about the insane weather. she'd rather cuddle than go out.
today being friday, we had another afternoon activity session. i had a board games thing in my room, and it was really popular, again. it's astonishing how intense these guys get about chess. as soon as a game begins, someone has called challenge to play the winner. the longer it takes to oust a winner, the longer the line of challengers. i'm happy that more kids choose my games than choose, say, the movie down the hall. there are even kids who go to study rooms to finish homework or do extra work. how do you say no to a kid who comes to you and asks if they can do more practice questions because they were still making mistakes at the end of classtime? good on them!
of course, today being friday i feel like i should have some sort of social plan... but i don't. my regularly scheduled card game tomorrow is even in jeopardy. oh well. i do have oodles of my own crap to do. i just lack the initiative.
OH! classic unorthodox "teachable moment" (for all you teachers out there who are up on jargon.)
grade 11 math today, we're discussing sequences (which i think most of them are getting! agh!) ANYWAY, my ol' buddy the chronic weed guy, tells me he smokes weed every day. He says he spends 25 bucks a day, because he's smart enough to share (otherwise it would be 50). So I ask him how much a week -> 175 bucks. then i make him multiply that by the 52 weeks. his THC-laden brain can't handle the daunting task of 175 times 52, so we do a shortcut: 365 times the original 25 bucks. we do it on the board. it's 9125 bucks. now, in the middle of the calculation, his friend pipes up (hahah... oh, I'm funny) that it's really 50 bucks a day, and so we multiply our answer by two and find that these two wasters-of-potential are smoking 18, 250 dollars each year. They were stunned. I'm sure they talked about it over their after-school joint. (btw, we ditched sequences for the five minutes we were chatting... i was just setting the scene).
In related news (sex, drugs and rap), one of my brightest art students, and another good student both told me how they had to leave town to go for an ultrasound this week - they are pregnant. i'm afraid they could see my disappointment all over my face...
miss you muchly
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5 comments:
I like that your students are open with you about thier "social" activites. You are a cool teacher.
it is not quite that cold here.... no snow yet. it was -7 this week sometime and loads of people were complaining. I was not... we deserve it and there are people like you who are way colder!
are the pups close to coming yet?
a little bit too open, sometimes. it's hard to know what to pretend not to hear, and what to engage. and i really wish i could be happy for my pregnant students, but all i see is the conclusion of their life... all around there are smart women who had babies too early and end up raising a pack of kids to do the same.
i better not have daughters - it's all i can do not to berate the girls at school. i'm thinking it's inappropriate for me to make a poster explaining the pill-depo-condom options.
pups should arrive within the week. fi's in her doghouse right now, so who knows?... could be puppytime!
and remember before you get annoyed with the wussies down there who complain about -7. it's a dry cold up here... i only feel it when skin is not protected. there it's damp, you feel it everywhere.
i'm one of the -7 wusses ... mostly because one of the two rads in my apt. isn't working at the moment and the livingroom, bathroom and kitchen are FREEZING. b/c it's so cold in my apt. (the fixit men are coming on monday! thank god!) i never quite get warm enough, thus, when i got outside, i'm already cold and even a little shaky.
gotta go turn on the oven and prop the door open so that i can start to feel my feet again.
yes, it's a damp cold.
i'll be happier about it when my heat is fixed.
ooh a damp cold is the worst! are you going to show us some photos of a pregnant fiona before its too late?!?! i'm very curious to see what a dog in the family way looks like. oh or do you think that would be making a spectical of her?? i'm sorry. i didn't mean to be insensitive... hahaha. i'm only half joking :p
shan, a cold house is different than cold outside. wingman keeps this place roasty-toasty, almost too hot sometimes, but being cold inside sucks. i bet you wouldn't be a -7 wuss if your apt was appropriately heated.
and les, i will try to remember to photograph the pregnant fiona tomorrow. she isn't shy. a bit sucky, but she's confused, on top of bulky. you might not be able to see it, but she's big! for her.
when she jumps up, i can feel the weight difference.
and any pup of mine who gets knocked up (or up-the-tree as the newfies say) deserves to be made spectacle of!
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