Horn of Plenty

Yesterday I went on my first field trip (as a chaperone). We took a group of about 20 girls to General Dynamics in Scottsdale for a "Girls in Engineering Day". I don't know how many of these girls had ever been to Scottsdale, because they were really, really excited, especially when they saw, during the bus ride, how "beautiful" the apartment complexes were. When we got there, it was all blonde, rich Scottsdale middle-school girls with their mommies and then...my girls. There was little communication between the two groups, but a lot of staring.

Anyway, we went on a tour of the facility. The girls were able to see some of the military technology that General Dynamics is working on. I don't know if the girls were impressed, but I was. Then we ate pizza and drank soda. After lunch we went on a scavenger hunt, during which they had to build a mehcanical "object grabber", decode some ASCII binary, and connect a circuit to create a flashlight. I really enjoyed helping the students with these tasks, but most of them left the event feeling pretty upset because they had been told they were going to make their own lipgloss, but that never really panned out. Now I feel like I have to somehow incorporate "lipgloss manufacturing" into one of their science classes.

Well, now I have one week off for fall break. I have never a) needed anything more b) been so happy and c) needed anything more.


Lee took this week off too, I am so excited to do nothing!