WWI

Well, the past 24 hours have been a whirlwind... Last night I dropped off my vehicle to get fixed in New Ulm and picked up a loaner. I had to make sure there would be enough room for all the kids I needed to drive down to MLHS to hear the guest speaker, and thankfully the dealership gave me a 13 Ford Explorer to drive for the day. It's dark green but looks black and has enough room for six passengers. Nice!

After running errands, I got home just in time to quick eat something before bible study. Except... I had left my house keys on my car keys. Normally I have a spare set in my purse, but I had given them to my friend who works at MVL so she could get into my apartment if the weather was bad and she needed a place to stay. Thankfully she answered when I called and we met up in Nicollet so she could give me my spare back. I was able to eat something and made it to bible study late, but I still made it!

This morning I put enough gas in the car to get me to the field trip and back and picked up the New Ulm bus riders so we wouldn't have to wait for them to get all the way out to school. That worked pretty slick! They get to the bus stop in New Ulm at 7:45, a parent watched them until I could get there, and then they all piled in and we trekked down to Northrup.

The guest speaker was AMAZING, as usual. Arn Kind dressed up as a doughboy (soldier from WWI) and showed us artifacts, clips from movies, pictures, etc. from WWI. Our favorite parts of the experience were when he did a live demonstration of the causes of the war, or how it got started. Since Courtland sat in the middle, most of our kids got picked as volunteers for this reenactment. He had tshirts with country names/flags on them, and he arranged the countries geographically in the middle of the gym. Then he explained Germany's grand plan to win the war, what they wanted to happen, and what actually happened. Mr. E got to be Russia, ready to jump in and help out little Serbia. The principal from Truman got to be the US, staying way over in the corner minding his own business, occasionally saying, "Hey, stop fighting. Cut that out. Be nice." It was a great way to connect the facts to something that the kids will remember.

A student from another school got to be a pilot and our speaker taught him how to fly a plane. First he dressed the part, complete with a wool jacket, soft scarf (to protect their necks from the scratchy wool uniform under the jacket when they twisted and turned to see their blind spots as they flew), aviator hat, and goggles. A plunger was the base of the steering wheel and an actual steering wheel from a WWI plane got put on top of that. He had an app on his phone that would play noises, so he could direct the pilot to shoot at an enemy plane and when the kid pressed the machine gun plate, the sound of bullets echoed around the gym. Same for opening up the throttle and taking down an enemy plane. Pilots got to be 'Aces' when the took down 10 enemy aircraft. Our guy got cocky after successfully shooting down two. Then he got 'lured' in by a decoy plane and was attacked by six enemy planes... his plane exploded and he 'died'.

Our speaker went over by 15 minutes and said he could keep talking for at least another hour, but he knew we had to go. We had been planning to eat in Fairmont, but since Mr. E had to be back to school by one, we ate in New Ulm. My car picked up food from Subway and ate it at school. There was road construction in Courtland. Well, work crews were picking up snow off the street, so it was down to a one-lane. We had to wait for five minutes just sitting there smelling our food. It was kind of torture.

The rest of the day at school was kind of strange. We had a little recess, did social studies, had a little more recess. And most of my class said they are planning to leave early tomorrow. There's a tournament in Lakefield this weekend and normally classes leave early for this. However, the girls don't play at all tomorrow and the boys don't play until 6:00. I thought for sure everyone would be staying. Apparently the parents of the girls team want to take them bowling as a team bonding experience, so a bunch of them are leaving at 12:30 or earlier. Great. And this is the first I'm hearing about it. So I don't know how many 7-8th graders I'll have or how many 5-6th graders I'll have tomorrow. I sent out a message to parents asking them to relay their plans, and I've heard back from about half the class. Grr... skipping school to go bowling? It makes me crabby.