Summer Camp 2008

Before I talk about the huge party up in Quebec City after the school term ended (since I lament the fact that I came back from there probably 2 weeks too soon), I must speak of the Summer Enrichment Program(c). The school put together students mainly from Ghana in the dorms of the universities and then give them a month of workshops, trips, and other exploration activities. Tokulah put it best when I arrived back last Monday, in that it wasn't called a "summer camp," but an "enrichment program."

Thus, I was asked to give two workshops last week on "enriching" students in the wily ways of mathematics and computers. I could have done absolutely anything I wanted, but having seen the things I did with the kids during the last two years, he wanted to have them build paper polyhedra, and also to play with the computer parts that I accumulated over the last two years.

Fortunately I didn't have to do much planning, except to make sure the parts and things were all there and allow some educational lecture time. And I got paid so it was all good.

In the first workshop on Monday, I gave a short lecture on fractals (the Sierpinski triangle), and then talked about making tetrahedra. Then I had them build a Sierpinski pyramid.

I had half hoped they'd finish the whole thing by the end of the first two hours, but they seemed to have gave up steam and totally fell short by about 10 of the 64 needed. To top it off, I had made sure there were 72 photocopies (18 times 4 different colours, I'm so thoughtful) so there should have been extras of each colour, but some went missing and I had to fish out some ruined ones from the garbage can to finish the damn thing myself.

Do I have any pictures of it? Nope. It didn't hold up properly because the kids (ranging from 8 to 16 probably) didn't have any experience making paper models and so some of the tetrahedra were completely messed up. When I returned on Friday to give the computer workshop, the whole pyramid had fallen apart and I had to stick it together. It makes me sad when things are broken for a long period of time with nobody to fix them... :(

The funny thing about Monday was that I was unaware until I got there that the afternoon writing workshop had been cancelled and they wanted me to keep going with the math workshop. So I had to improvise - they spent the second two hour session making origami cubes. By that point, most of them were running on empty and they basically nodded off like the kids that you'd expect, sitting indoors in nice weather and folding paper into stupid shapes.

But the amazing thing later on Friday I discovered, that made things all the better in my perspective, was that the kids had painted some little panels during that week after the pyramid was complete - and one of them whom I had pegged as kind of ambivalent to the whole deal (which he was, actually) had painted the pyramid. Some of them had very cute paintings of their trip to Toronto, houses, flags, or whatnot, but that one kid painted the pyramid. I was touched. :)

What did they do on Friday? Massacre system units. Then I had to spend another hour after their workshop putting them back together properly.

At least it was "enriching." TO MY WALLET! :O

Whine

I'm not trying to make excuses for not jogging today, or sound like a whiny brat, but...

Several days ago, I hit my ankle on one of the many chairs that like to hang around my room. It's the same ankle that I fractured and sprained and sprained yet again over the years, so it's not like it was the most fit part of my body. Anyway, it was scratched and bruised so I didn't want to cause it undue stress, even though I've been jogging over the last few days.

But somehow there's always been more annoying things (rather than medically dangerous things) that keep hurtling themselves in my path. Like goddamn mosquitos the size of loonies. I had one hanging out around me that I couldn't kill until yesterday and it somehow gave me five bites, including one on my ankle bruise.

That's another thing I hate about summer. :(

It is too hot.

I saw a guy outside jogging around noon. He was heading up the overpass, his shirt completely soaked with sweat and probably part of his flesh along with it. What made it even worse is that there was absolutely no shade, and saner people who do that kind of stuff carry around jugs of water with them, and he had none.



Hell, I'm wearing half a shirt.




Notice that I get mightily ticked when it gets hot. One summer as a kid, my family and I went to Toronto and it was so terribly hot there that I was literally dripping sweat from the ends of my pigtails. I blame it on my parents who dragged us outside in the sun. My TO cousins wised up and bought an A/C unit.

On the other hand, our family never believed in A/C, and I only get that fan in the background to the left.

Couch-to-5K

I don't know why I didn't find this webpage last year. This program recommends jogging interspersed with walking, spacing out the workout days. This way, the body can tolerate the stresses and adapt to the workout.

I didn't do this. I needed a sped up schedule, because the run was barely a month after I had registered in September, and I was definitely not in any sort of shape. Well, maybe if blob counts as a shape.

Today, the temperatures did not let up. It must be in the 30s with humidity here, and everyone is praying for rain. (And now as I am typing this, the rain is starting to fall.) The humidity was thick enough to cut with a knife when I went jogging this morning (quite a bad idea today for me - I was ready to keel over from the heat).

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We visited an old couple from church in Ste-Foy this afternoon because my mum heard that the woman had broken her ankle from a fall and was going around in a wheelchair. In the meantime, the man is fighting cancer while having recovered from a stroke last year. It is most frustrating because the woman is 75 and fiercely independent. They still live in a rather large house with a large yard teeming with flowers and growing things.

I had one very embarrassing moment (or should I say many continuously embarrassing moments) while in conversation with them due to my mum. She is very vocal about how she feels about aging, and she considers herself, that 58 year old knucklehead, WAAAAAAAAAAY OLD BEYOND BELIEF. Now, talking to two people in their mid 70s, she proceeds to completely dismiss how anyone their age can "do anything." It doesn't help that the people the couple know are all in their 70s or older, who apparently can't "do anything!!!"

They were pretty lighthearted about it though, laughing at me while I hid my completely flabbergasted face, as my mum kept going on and on about how these old people were simply incapacitated from disease and illness or just ready to croak. I was most grateful for them not to have kicked us out of the house after having fed us a light lunch.

I swear, she'll last another hundred years, be able to totter around and do a billion things, and still hammer out the same schpiel.

Tales of Gardening Feats

My mum, brother and I took the time this afternoon to get some flowers for my dad's grave and plant them. I finally brought the plastic green dividers that I bought from the school's rummage sale last year. I also finally got to dig up old useless roots in the soil and plant living things in the bed. Like LIVE flowers. Anyway, it's looking a lot better now. Such a pretty day...

Some cute LOST gifs made by an SA goon.

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I was working the last two days so I hadn't posted. One of the things I noticed is that students were definitely going insane. Secondary 1 to secondary 5... they were all going positively insane. It is warm, it is green, and it is SUMMER. I got fed up with having nobody and nothing to back up any discipline cases (especially being a supply teacher), so they were treated to a two-day WTF marathon where anything went. Fortunately, the more sensible ones were plodding along fine, but the crazies were just absolutely crazy. These are 17 year old mental cases I'm talking about.

If it were up to me, I'd have expelled their asses a long time ago, or just let them go out to the workforce and try their stupid antics and see how long they last when their boss asks them to do something and they defiantly yell "NO."

Staying Clean While Travelling

My brother finally returned Thursday evening. The first thing he did was take a shower. The second thing was eat mama's congee. The third thing was take a nap. (Thus sums up my brother.)

When we folded the laundry earlier today, he held up his white shirt and said, "Oh wow, it's clean."
"Why didn't you guys have time to do your laundry or shower while on tour?"
"That's because we didn't have time. There wasn't a shower on the bus."
"Well, I mean when you have a day off you could rent a motel room and just shower or something."
"That's because we had too many expenses on our off days so we didn't get any."
"Well, I figure one of your expenses could have been, oh, maybe... do your laundry, and another one would have been, um, take a shower? I'm sure your fans would appreciate a non-smelly band when you perform."
After a pause, I mentioned that they could have gone to a science lab somewhere along the way and get a free shower that way. "You know, the chemical showers?"
"Where would we have time to go to a science lab?"
"A school... you know, just step in there, ask to use their shower of some sort..."

[On second thought, they have showers at a gym and in the locker rooms at school as well so you could just go in there instead. I didn't think of that at the time because I spend all my time teaching science for chrissakes.]

Anyway, his very nice girlfriend is also visiting this week, so they're out picnicing at the moment. It is finally a sunny day, after weeks of rain rain rain RAIN cloud rain rain cloudrainrain SUNrain. In the meantime, I have completely opened my windows and am right now experiencing the hayfever that I should have been going through weeks ago when everyone else had it.

SCHOOL SAVED THANKS TO THE GOVERNMENT

In other news, I was called to go up to the school yesterday morning. I had arrived after a press conference given at the school, stating in much pomp and pagentry that the school will finally receive money to build its extention for the high school, thus saving these students from being shipped out downtown in the future for years to come. (That is, until all these elementary school kids get up to high school and then there may be even more problems.) As for the lack of news coverage online... well, there was apparently a communiqué sent to everyone but only Global news came by and there was a short 2 minute segment yesterday at 6pm.

A TV Movie I'm Certain to Miss Anyway...

It appears that the thing I was an extra in this summer is actually going to air this holiday season. Now remember, I was the one in a purple pompom hat and a grey coat. Or the asian girl. Whichever one you might see in one scene. It's supposed to be freaking cold but in real life I was melting in 30 degree weather in a wool coat.