Yin and Yang
Wednesday and Thursday this week couldn’t have been more different. If you had visited our class on Wednesday, you would have experienced a typical rainy spring day in the northwest. We were on school land, scattered around the various wetland areas getting characteristically wet and dirty. One group was up to their knees in the muck of a skunk cabbage swamp, looking for macroinvertibrates. Who knew that there is actually a creature called a Cyclops? Other groups were catching frogs around the ponds – or missing frogs diving back into the ponds- and checking out salamander egg masses in various stages of development. Later in the day, you would have witnessed the dissection of a dead bullfrog, which added a whole new dimension to the usual desire for an after- class shower. Wet, chilled, muddy, froggy, and smiling, we had a great day on Wednesday.
Thursday you would have gotten a whole different picture of our program. You would have seen us dressed up and in various disguises, playing scouting games in the city. We took our awareness practice into an urban environment where we practiced blending in, sneaking up on and scouting our instructors in a pretend scenario of “follow the bad guys”. Cell phones in hand, we talked code to our teams and attempted to successfully complete our mission without making the general public suspicious. Any kid who has ever played spy games with their siblings would have loved this. Any adult who still has any kid left in them would have loved this. Sitting in a sunny city park at the end of the day, we were warm, clean, dry, and smiling, after yet another successful day of learning in the residential program.