We have returned from our three day camping trip with the 7th grade. Here is what I know:
- Seventh graders are fun to spend time with.
- Nothing beats a wood fire for hours of entertainment – building, stoking, cooking, toasting, poking, watching
- A grill basket may be a camping/teacher’s best friend
- Kids think that just because they are in a tent, you can’t hear them.
- Kids think that you were never in 7th grade
- A high ropes course is just as terrifying when you are 52 as when you are 12.
- It’s hard to sit on my hands and let them problem solve. But it’s good to sit on my hands and let them problem solve.
- I love my Palm Pre.
- There is no job so boring or hard that you can’t make a game out of it – for example – full water jug relay.
- When it is 86°F in September and you don’t shower for three days, 7th graders (and teachers, too) can get a little over-ripe.
- After six campfires & three days without a shower, it takes multiple shampoo/conditioner applications to rid hair of smoke scent.
- There are certain campfire songs that will always be annoying.
- There are certain campfire songs that will always be just perfect.
- S’mores are still delicious, though….
- Hunger is the best sauce.
- Michigan has glow worms. Really.
- Hail and hickory nuts are virtually indistinguishable in the middle of the night in a tent.
- Yurts are cool.
- Don’t eat the bright orange mushrooms.
- I have the best job in the world.
Photos taken with my lovely little Palm Pre.
Living on the Lip of Insanity 
Is there any place in your life where you *don’t* look on the bright side? Where you don’t learn something new? I think you’re amazing.
Well, there are faculty meetings that sometimes make me feel less than enlightened. Maybe I’m just wired that way, but I’ll try to be less annoying about it if that helps. There were few downsides to the trip. The weather cooperated, the kids were fun, the teachers and staff were excellent, and the DVD player on the bus worked. I didn’t sleep all that much, but who’s complaining?
Oh no! I *love* your attitude! No annoyance at all…appreciation for the way you seem to look at the world.
Oh, good. I think that if I tell my students that you get out of life what you put into it, I should walk the walk as well as talk the talk. And it’s more fun this way, that’s for sure!