Field trip -- Local landfill. Written by Guest Blogger Dave (aka Mr. Patrow)

The following photos are all from one day in the life of our AP Environmental Science class.

This is the majority of the class.  Three of the boys are off making trouble someplace:-)

Mr. Patrow insists that students take detailed notes about garbage.

Don't slide down this or you're in for a smelly landing. 

All smiles for the garbage dump. (The black pillars in the back are the landfill methane vents.)

 Things don't always work the way they are supposed to.  A non-functioning sedimentation tank.

Another photo of the same tank with garbage floating in the upper chamber. 

 

You can't see them, but families were sorting through this pile as we walked by.  You can see the bags of items they have collected to sell for recycling. 

Jen sharing the virtues of cloth diapers after we got back to the school.  Disposable diapers take a lot of room in landfills in the USA -- the 3rd largest item after food and drink containers.  Here disposable diapers are now commonly used and some end up in landfills.  Many others unfortunately end up shredded by dogs or in local rivers or roadside ditches.  Cloth diapers are a much better alternative!  (Yes, Jenn added a few editorial comments to Dave's one line caption here!)

Field trip -- 6th graders learn about Mount Merapi

Dave with this year's crop of 6th grade boys -- they all have amazing stories.  One was born and lived most of his life in Bangladesh.  Another lived most of his life in a remote tribal village accessible only by helicopter.  Another will be tested to see if he is "gifted" in the next few months.  One boy's father, a passionate Christian, is the owner of a successful film company.  Others are children of missionaries form South Korea.  A special group indeed!

Yesterday's post featured the 11th grade fieldtrip to search for invertebrates in a local stream.  The next day, the 6th graders went to a surprisingly good interpretive center featuring our local volcano, Mount Merapi.  After erupting quite severely 2 years ago, Merapi has been quiet enough although I hear it still burps from time to time. 

This field trip was kind of rained out ....except for the time inside the visitor center watching the short movie and looking at a few pictures, much time was spent huddling under umbrellas and trying to avoid getting wet.

Here are all of this year's 6th graders.  They are working hard to enjoy their last year of elementary school -- their last year of having recess -- before jumping into 7th grade!  Thanks for taking them out to make some memories, Mr Patrow!

Field trip -- 11th graders search for invertebrates

Dr. Livingston I presume?

For this blog post, we depart from family news to focus on what Dave has been doing at school.  Last month he took his students on a couple of field trips.  Field trips are hard to organize and a bit stressful along the way, but years later the students will remember it.  He's excited to be teaching Advanced Placement Environmental Science this year, a new class for him.   I (Jennifer) am signing off now and Dave is taking over the story....

My first field trip with Environmental Science was to a stream flowing through rice paddies.  Our goal was to find bugs and count them; which the students did with gusto.

In transit to the fieldtrip site

Most families here have a motorcycle instead of a car.  Here you see a whole line of them driving ahead of our bus.  The blue van is our town's answer to the public bus.  We normally ride these blue vans when we go shopping. 

Still in transit

Here you can clearly see the rise paddies above the stream we visited.  The students are carrying nets and buckets.

I'm doing my best to look like a true professor.  I don't think the students are fooled.

Caught one!

After catching our bugs we head back down the hill to our bus.  I must mention that it was a missionary kid who is auditing my class that found this stream for us.

And heading back to school now...

Field Day and Rumplestilskin

Once again a long pause in blogging, due to what I call "technical difficulties" which disabled our internet for a week and a half. That always makes me get behind. So now we are in the busy stage that comes with the last week of school and packing to leave for 5 weeks and also packing up our household for a move to a new house! But I had to share a few pictures with you from our fun field day a week and a half ago.

The theme was Fairy Tales and Dave played the role of Rumpelstilskin. When the kids had their turn at his station, they had to make as many words as they could from the letters in his name! One team got over 150 words!

Another game featured Frogs and Lilypads and involved the kids having to pass live frogs around as fast as they could! Between groups, Jonathan was very fascinated with the frogs! It was a hot day and he got his first sunburn -- around the neck. I had put sunscreen on, but I guess I must have missed that spot!

It's TOMORROW!!!

I just wanted to ask you to pray for Dave's US History students.  It's not an Advanced Placement class, but tomorrow 5 of the students are taking the Advanced Placement exam for U.S. History.  It hasn't been done at this school in a long time, perhaps not ever -- so a precedent will be set!  For this privilege they are paying $87 each.  If they pass, they will save hundreds of dollars and a lot of time when they get to college.  Dave is at least as nervous as he was prior to the birth of our children, but unlike then he won't get to see the fruit of his labor immediately.  The results don't come out until mid-summer!  Thanks for your prayers!

Walking to School

In a previous post, I mentioned that we travel on a sidewalk on the way to school. I realized my words didn't really given an accurate perception of the experience so here is a picture of our lovely sidewalk! Apparently it was only built a year ago, and things in this country do not tend to hold their structure very long, as you can see by the landslide partially covering our sidewalk! None-the-less it makes our walk much safer and we're so thankful for it!

Here's another safety feature on our walk to school! The school has 24 hour security personnel and one their duties is to help people like us cross the road safely! They are my heroes every day!