Vikings History

We made it to our field trip! It was kind of a rocky road though. New Ulm called a two hour late start last night due to the cold this morning. That means ILS is two hours late. Except I have to be at school at the normal time for the Nicollet bus riders. Since we had a field trip, should we still go? Could we collect the NU kids even with no bus? After a few phone calls and many texts (and a not great night of sleep), we determined that yes, the field trip would go on. The New Ulm parent driver (who was already going to pick kids up from the bus stop before they headed for Immanuel) agreed to pick up the other passengers. Two of the four were her kids. One was on the way and another got dropped off in town. Perfect.

I found out later that one of them (the one on the way) thought school was two hours late/the field trip was cancelled, so she wasn't ready to go! Thankfully, a classmate called her to make sure she was awake and on time for her ride. She was! Whew!

The rest of us packed up and left pretty much right after the bus dropped them off. I just left my car running between my school arrival and field trip departure. The temp was -20, not counting wind chill. Brr! But we made it to MLHS right on time. 

The speaker was on the Vikings. This is a new talk and I could tell. He wasn't as familiar with the content and read right off the powerpoint a bunch, although he tried not to. My kids commented on that afterward. "Yes, we noticed Miss H. We thought for sure you'd be mad about that!" I will admit, it's a big pet peeve of mine; I always tell students presenting NOT to read directly from the presentation. Usually your audience can read for themselves, so it's a waste of time! 

I did learn a lot. And there were some cool interactive parts. Mr. E was picked to put on the Viking armor. He wasn't too happy about that, but he was a good sport. Then about 30 kids got picked to 'row' a Viking ship. That was cool. He ended the talk with some Viking games, which is a little like the Olympics. All the kids split into two groups. Teachers picked which ones to match against each other. I looked the most like a teacher (or he recognized me from past years), so I got to pick the kids from my team for the events. 

One of my students got to duel with a kid from another school. They had shields and swords (both foam) and goggles to protect their eyes. My kid won all three rounds. Then there was archery (shooting rubber arrows at stuffed animals). My team didn't do so well there. I picked kids from other schools to be fair, but they've never shot bow and arrow before. Shucks. Should've done mine. They all have experience from Camp Omega! But I'm glad I was fair about it. The third task was a tug of war, which we won. And the final tie-breaking event was the clan's battle cry. My team won that too. 

We ended our field trip with a trip to Pizza Ranch for lunch. I cobbled together a whole 30 meal at the salad bar, but I supplemented it with walnuts from home. One of my kids noticed me eating them and gasped, "Miss H! You brought your own food here! ...But I guess that makes sense since you can't eat much besides the salad bar." At the end of the school day another kid commented, "You're getting close to being done Miss H!" Except I'm not. Even though Feb 2nd is the end of my 30 days, I'm doing the reintroduction diet which goes for another 15. Oof. I'll be glad when it's done.