Since we are in the third day of the twelve, I would like to share with you my favorite song and video of the season. I think it was around last year, but it really got exposure this year.
Since the good doctor made mention of the two songs here is Josh Groban singing Petit Papa Noel from his glorious Holiday CD, Noel.
and… Vive la Vent
(From now I won’t add graphics to every post to save on time for me, and prevent scroll-wheel syndrome for my fellow readers with paltry sub-1080p screen resolutions 😛 )
There have been some strange advertisement campaigns in the past, but this is the first time I have heard of one like this. Usually this sort of thing is left to the commercials on TV, and there have been some really strange ones like this one, this one, this one, and even some of these. This though is big, it’s live, and you can win a trip to Africa. I will quote the blog post from Capcom:
Majini *coughZOMBIEScough* have gone through a small part of London, leaving behind a trail of remnant body parts from their victims. Find the bodies on the morning of Thursday March 12th and win a vacation to Africa.
Register at residentevil5@capcomeuro.com to be sure to receive the clues as to where the remains can be found.
Find as many of the bodies as you can, or what is left of them, and return them to Westminster Bridge by 11am.
The body parts will be hidden at locations near Trafalgar Square, within this area.
And this is where you should take them.
Alert us to your presence by standing on the bridge, holding the artificial body parts over your head and shouting “Kijuju!” We will be there, watching you, and will approach when you make yourselves known.
Points allocated for each body part – 2 points for arms, 2 points for legs, 3 points for torsos, 5 points for a head. The more body parts you find and bring to us, the more points you get. The player(s) with the most points by 11am win the trip to Africa.
The game begins at 9am. Good hunting – we will see you on the bridge. Take pictures, take video, have fun. And don’t wear your best clothes – it’s going to be messy.
A little strange this one. All I have to say is, “Kijuju!” (whatever that means). 
I have been doing a lot of catching up on TV shows lately. This has eaten into my available time to write in this blog. That, and my interest is sort of lagging right now. I now have several DVDs I checked out of the library in addition to several hours of TV shows I still haven’t watched. I also checked out Mario Kart DD for my Gamecube. With all of this expect my posting to continue to be like this for a while.
As for work, my week had some interesting moments. I subbed for 7th grade science on Monday. Not a lot going on there. Six classes of handing out books then letting them do an assignment out of them. Mostly good classes. Tuesday I subbed for 6th grade math, staying on the analytical/logical side of the brain. This teacher had math classes at three different levels, two classes of each. All were similar in going over homework, my answering questions, and the starting the next section. Some actual teaching! I will have two days of 6th grade math at another school at the end of next week. I saw a former student from 4th/5th grade ministry on Monday at science, and I hope to see one next week who just started this year at the school I will be at.
Wednesday I found myself in the elementary school right next to the middle school I will be doing math at next week. The level was third grade. The day started out with the smell of electrical fire near the classroom, though there was no fire as far as I could tell. This turned out to be sort of an interesting day. This is the only school I know to have a vocabulary special- a teacher comes in to teach vocabulary- and they had that in the morning. Now, music, gym, and art are standards, and I’ve also subbed for an elementary social studies teacher. There was a Japanese special at another school, but this is the first school where I’ve encountered a vocabulary special, though not the first classroom I subbed in where they had this special. A couple of months ago I had five days in second grade at this school, and some of those classes had vocabulary as well. Moving on, they had MAP testing, so that killed another 45 minutes or so. It ended early so we played Sparkle using their spelling lists before finishing the morning with a language arts lesson. After lunch they had a “holiday store.” This is similar to a book fair, but instead of books the students could buy cheap gifts. The rest of the day was typical with reading groups, math, and science. Nothing interesting like labs, just book-work for the most part.
Thursday and Friday were both music days. Friday I subbed for an elementary music teacher. These are always potluck days as to which grades I will get. It turned out I would get two classes each of kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 5th grades. Almost all with different lessons of course. 1st and 2nd played music insrument bingo, 5th did a science tie-in lesson about bones using an old black spiritual song about Ezekiel and the dry bones, which turned out to be a review lesson since they had already done it before. Oops? We just made a little competition of it. Kindergarten had the only real new lesson. They learned about the difference between a lullaby and a march- fast vs. slow, loud vs. soft.
My other music day, Thursday, was actually a very odd class for middle school. There are schools that have divided up the year for certain classes into quarters, fifths, and sixths. This school has the year divided for a set of classes into, get this, eighths. That’s right- each class is just four weeks long, and for 7th grade at least (8th grade actually has this class for a full quarter) this was one of those classes. That’s not the most unusual aspect of this class. That would go to the focus of the class- African drumming. I have not heard before of this sort of specialization in middle school. College, maybe high school, but not middle school. Anyway, the classroom of course was filled with drums, mostly more modern renditions of African drums, but also a few more traditional models. Also, bells and rattles. These three instruments make up African music (at least Ghana, the country in Africa the video focused on) I learned from the video. Yes, with this sort of specialization comes the usually correct assumption that the sub will have no idea how to teach it, so the video is the standard staple of the sub for this sort of class. Unfortunately the video was only 20 minutes, leaving me to fill in the rest of the time. So, we went of the sheet they filled out and then I let them play silent ball for the rest of the time.
Well, that’s my week in review. We will see what the future of this blog holds. I am toying with the idea of starting another blog at some point where I will attempt to write a story a little bit at a time. Maybe write a choose-your-own-adventure like I brought up in Taylhis’s blog 🙂 . For now, just an idea. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.
Well, school starts on Tuesday, so for one last summery hurrah, we ventured over to the coastal cities in Ohio on Lake Erie for some fun. First stop was the African Safari Park in Port Clinton, which is really more of a drive-thru zoo than anything having to do with Africa. They do have zebras, giraffes, and camels, but most of their animals hail from North America. It’s always an extremely fun experience, and we try to go every year. Since this summer was very busy with the new baby and all, it didn’t occur to me that we hadn’t gone yet until I struck up a conversation with a really nice elderly couple at a restaurant the other day. When I asked where they were from, they replied, “west of Cleveland”, so that got me thinking about the Safari Park in Port Clinton. On the way home from the restaurant that night, I said to my husband, you know, we haven’t been to the safari park this year… An idea was hatched, and there we were on Saturday with 6 of our closest friends.
Saturday morning was almost like a one-act play with all of us standing there on our front porch, trying to figure out who was going to ride with whom; we were trying to find the best way to do things to be as economically (and environmentally) friendly as possible… We ended up taking just 2 cars for the 12 of us, and then once we got to Port Clinton, it was like musical chairs (cars) once again while we tried to figure out how to position everyone to get the most bang for our buck, so to speak, since the safari place charges by carload and by individual…
So anyway, after a stop at Cheese Haven In Port Clinton – and now I have to go off on yet another tangent because Cheese Haven is SOOO good and totally worth a stop if you’re in the area. And what I mean by “in the area” is anywhere up to 100 or even 1000 miles, depending on how much you like cheese. They have so many varieties, along with fresh jerkies and beef sticks and other yummy treats. We stopped there to get our lunch of corned beef sandwiches – and they have the best corned beef sandwiches, yum. Unfortunatlely, I was not wlling to take 4 kids into the cheese store to run around, so I was stuck in the car with the kids, but my oh-so-thoughtful hubby talked the worker into making me a sample bag (which they’re not supposed to do, you only get the free samples if you go into the store, but hey, I was stuck in the car), AND he made my sandwich for me – how sweet 🙂
Ok, tangent aside… now we’ve arrived at the Safari Park, and it is SO crowded… Makes me think twice about going there again next summer unless it’s near their last weekend of operation like it was when we went last year… I mean, I just can’t stand waiting in line to go to the bathroom, of all things… Waiting in line is not much fun at all, but when you’re waiting in line to do something as necessary and as unrewarding as going to the bathroom, it’s really annoying. So, because it was so crowded, it took us forever to get through the drive-through zoo part; although not as long as it took the other vehicle in our caravan because they were stuck behind an obscenely slow white van the whole time… So while we got out of the drive-through section, they had barely just begun… But the whole park is a really cool place; even more so if you don’t care about the vanity nor cleanliness of your car since there are some rather huge creatures (including deer, elk, elands, buffalo, zebras, giraffe and longhorns) who drool, head-butt, lick, slobber, and basically invade your car as your drive through their habitat. I think you must truly be an animal lover to appreciate the place since you come out filthy… This was the first time we had been there in our new car, but I’m happy to report no major damage, that I know about, at least; but what’s this about driving our car through a pond, jamiahsh?!?
We’ll get to the bottom of that later… when you come out of the drive-through part, it’s time for the walk-through zoo section, and there they have monkeys, macaws (military, not green-winged as the sign said), ocelots, warthogs, alpacas, and tortoises; not to mention rides for the kiddees: ponies and camels. I noticed that they had 2 camels for riding; one was resting while the other gave the rides. But interestingly, one was a Dromedary and the other a Bactrian camel, the difference between the two species being mainly in how many humps they had… My daughters rode the Dromedary (1 hump), and they really seemed to enjoy themselves – I wonder if riding the Bactrian (2 humps) would have been any different? I was envious because I’m no where near the 125 lb. weight limit, so I’ll probably never get to ride a camel… After that, we got to check out an animal show, ironically titled “Laugh With the Animals”. It was ironic because our host for the show was so dry – she had the audience doing everything but laughing… It was a fun show, though, and something that we hadn’t yet done at the park in our previous visits. Overall, an interesting day… as it is anytime you have 12 people on an outing together!
If you liked reading my synopsis of the day, check out my fellow tangents.org blogger and get Jamiahsh’s take on the whole thing. I’m going to take a lesson from him and blog this in 2 installments… got to leave the readers craving more, so they say! Check out my next post for a full summary of our visit to a year-round haunted house – Ghostly Manor in Sandusky, Ohio! Until then…