Today was a very interesting day! I had some classes, and they were pretty standard. I played outside with kids in every free moment, including some time practicing unicycles! These kids can fly around so fast it's amazing! Meanwhile I was sticking close to the bars that I could hold on to as I "rode." It was fun and with a little more practice I might be able to go forward for one full pedal without falling! Haha! I still have a long way to go!

Another thing that was different about today was cleaning the pool! The outdoor pools are not covered for the winter, and there is a thick layer of dirt and leaves and sticks all over the bottom and all around the edges of the pool... Basically it is one big muck-covered concrete hole. So the 4th 5th and 6th graders all went out with scrub brushes, sponges, squeegies and hoses and set to work... I helped out! Wow, it is not easy and it took several hours with everybody working, but the kids worked hard and sometimes even seemed to be having fun. It is definitely satisfying to see a dirty mucky area suddenly turn sparkly blue!

There was one more event that brought all the kids together to work for the common good... The 6th graders brought out the hundreds of cans that had been collected [easily 80% beer cans] and dumped them on the ground and everybody stomped on them and crunched them down flat. The noise was incredible! I remember as a kid I liked crunching cans after finishing a drink, but I had never experienced such a mass can-crushing before.

Still, the most surprising thing of the day had to be school lunch. Well I found out that school lunch was shrimp dumplings, rice, [so far so good] and sweet and sour... Whale! Wow! I couldn't believe it! What's wrong with sweet and sour pork? Chicken? It really was whale. I struggled for the longest time before it was time to eat, wondering what I should do. It is generally appreciated when I eat everything, because the kids are discouraged from pickiness and they have to eat everything. So I eat everything whether I like it or not. But this was the first time that I had to struggle with my conscience. Well I decided that it was too late to help this whale whether or not I ate it, and didn't make an issue of it. I assume it is not illegal or they would not be serving it all over town. SURELY it is not an endangered variety... I can only hope!!! I definitely stared at it for a long time before I could bring myself to take the first bite. Poor whale! It was not terrible, but it was pretty chewy. And black! I definitely would have been happy with just sweet and sour veggies. After lunch the vice principal asked me "what's the difference between that and a cow?" Well... I remembered the dogs hanging in butcher shops in Vietnam, and how I realized that it was just a cultural difference. Somehow whale seems different though... There are plenty of dogs and cows in the world... I welcome other people's thoughts... It is a complex and convoluted issue... I don't intend to make a practice of eating whale though.