Day 1 - July 1, 2011

I am starting Project 365 again! Another year of a picture a day. I hope it will get me back into the blogging spirit :-)

I spent the entire week in class. PESTL to be exact - Partnership for Effective Science Teaching and Learning. The class was incredibly boring exciting and filled with action packed experiments and riveting discussions. Or just lots of sitting around, lots of food, some working and reading in groups,


and trying (and failing) to go on a bat hunting expedition. After being told (by the main instructor) we were heading up the canyon so dress in hiking gear, we ended up (with the bat instructor) at the golf course, where he told us the state wouldn't actually allow us to catch and release any bats. So, this adventure turned out to involve lots of sitting as well, waiting for the little (and pricey) machine on the table to catch the bat noises and tell us a bat had arrived to drink for us.

However, it was too early and light outside, and the only bats we saw were on his computer screen. In the end, I got many awesome things out of the workshop. If those things were condensed, it would have taken only one day, but who's counting.

Thankfully I had my backyard oasis to come to every evening. Mike has spent the past week landscaping and creating this waterfall in our backyard. It doesn't look like much in the picture, you just have to be there to experience the relaxing sound of water falling into a pool of water. Many a hour has been spent outside enjoying the sun and sounds.


Food. That was the big topic of the week: what we were eating for lunch. There was a basic breakfast every morning and snacks, soda, and water galore for the rest of the day, but lunch was a different food extravaganza each day.

Monday: Olive Garden. Chicken Parmesan, salad, breadsticks, and two kinds of soup.
Tuesday: Cafe Rio. Special order, choose your own adventure.
Wednesday: Gandalfo's sandwiches.
Thursday: Rumbi grill. Buffet style rice bowls and their salad. No sweet potato fries though. Boo.
Friday: Goodwood. Beef brisket, pulled pork, turkey, mashed potatoes, baked beans, coleslaw, and cornbread biscuits.

I went home and was still too full for dinner almost every night. I swore I would never eat out for another month. But I broke that promise pretty quickly. Friday night in fact. We were invited to go to dinner and a movie with some friends of ours (the Patrick's and the Ewell's). I wanted to go for the company, but I was still full from lunch and my butt hurt too much from sitting all week to sit through a movie. Mike worked all night so he was sleeping on the couch, but I decided to go for the company anyway. We like to try new kinds of ethnic food. Today we tried a Peruvian restaurant. Lots of rice, and almost everything came with fries. The food was pretty good. One dish was curry-like without the curry flavor. Stir-fried meat, Asian influenced fried rice with ginger in it, tamales, a mashed potato dish layered with a chicken mixture, plaintains, and a fried fish covered in a seafood sauce. It kind of scares me when my food still has tentacles.


But we all tried it!
Interesting flavor - the texture not unlike calamari.

Now I am excited to get to work on all the things I was wishing I was doing while sitting in class. Next week should be jam packed with classroom and third grade fun! haha