The Simple Joys of Life!: Ohh the rain and fires!

So this past week has been strange, unusual, intense, and just plain weird! On Sunday after settling down from Mosquito Bar, it was time to plan for the beginning of session two of summercise. This time I'm teaching Cooking Up Culture, Bite Into It (a vitamin class), Flag Football (because all true Texans know how to play football), Outdoor Adventures and Xtreme Xpeditions (which are both hiking classes). For cooking up culture on the first day we wanted to take the kids on a trip to Mexico! We had them make Veggie Quesidillas with Guacamole dipping sauce, and for an exercise we wanted them to learn where Mexico is and the types of foods that grow there. Well I don't know what types of geography they are teaching these kids up here but when we asked them "where is Mexico located on the map" many kids pointed to Africa, Australia, South America,Asia, but I think that the funniest one was a little boy that pointed to the Continental US and said that that is where Mexico is located! So after the food was made many kids loved the quesidillas and dip and learned where Mexico really is located and how to say Hello in Espanol! In my Bite Into It class I was teaching about Vitamin A and how it was really important for your body, and for our snack we made Caribbean Kabobs and our activity is tracing out our bodies on butcher paper and every time we learn about a vitamin we draw how it helps us. Well it is a really great thing that I never wanted to be a painter or any type of an artist because some of my kids heads were shaped funny and they had extra skinny legs or funny looking arms with little stubs for fingers. I think i will just let my assistant draw the kids from now on! In Flag Football, I decided to spend the day giving them a pre-test to see if they could throw into a hoop and how fast they could run 20 yards. Then we played catch with the football just to get a feel for the ball and many of the kids like to be competitive so we played with the drop rule of if you dropped the ball then you were out. With a little bit of extra time I wanted to make it more interesting so I added in two more footballs to be thrown at the same time. They all really loved it and with every effort tried so hard to get our assistant Chase out because he is really good at football. On Tuesday it was Outdoor Adventures day and the constant rain since July 1st has made it really hard to do anything outside. But no matter the rain, our hiking classes went outside. We made banana boats for snack and then walked to the dredge which is about 2 miles from the rec. That was one of the toughest walks I have ever taken, not just because of the rain or the high winds, it was because the kids didn't pay attention and kept walking in the road and were about to get hit by cars! The other interns and I quickly learned that this behavior was not going to be tolerated and something drastic needed to be done. We are making them walk like little kids holding onto jump ropes just like the 5 year olds would do! On Wednesday it was around the same on Monday with the rain, but in my culture class we learned about Italy and still the kids couldn't even get the general region where Italy was located... but we made hummus with this new recipe and at every function that I now have when I get back to Texas it will feature this hummus! It was really that good and I will give the recipe to who ever wants it! In flag football, it's not football until someone start bleeding! Well, it was my class but we were playing a drill that is a little violent but everyone really wanted to play. All we were doing was trying to defend ourselves while trying to pull off our opponents flags. One of my kids was really good but because we were out in the rain, he slipped on some gravel and bit his lip really hard and it was a good bleeder! Well he really wanted to keep playing and tried to cover up his busted lip but it was just bleeding too much to not notice. So I made him go inside to try and rinse out his mouth to make the bleeding stop. By that time summercise was over and with making kids cry and having one bleeder it was a pretty good day! On Thursday it was another hiking class, we were going to travel up the back of Anvil Mountain and learn how to read a compass. On any other day it might have been a good hike but it was raining and cold as we were climbing up the mountain so many kids were complaining and by the end I just wanted to tell them to suck it up because they were the ones that wanted to be in that class, but I held a smile on my face and just had to say that it would help to bring a jacket and better shoes next time! Finally it was over and with almost busting my ear drums out because of blowing my whistle really loud at the kids every kid was accounted for and back on the bus! On Friday, it was my day to make lunch for the Diabetes Prevention Program or DPP so I made some baked Chicken and steamed Veggies but not one person showed up which was really sad for me. But I learned in that time about grant writing and gathered some interesting information about the DPP program.
So I know that most of this is not relating to my title but I needed to build some suspense! Well Monday my roommate Alex was boiling some water and our stove top caught on fire! It started sparking and Alex was screaming and me being in a quick reaction was to turn off the stove and find a fire extinguisher but I didn't really need one. Well after finding the extinguisher under the kitchen sink all the way in the back, I was just glad that not too much damage was done, only one burner didn't survive. So we managed to escape that one! Well on Tuesday, I was so excited to receive my package from my boyfriend of homemade cookies and I wanted to warm one up in the microwave, well I put it in for 15 seconds and then with 10 seconds left the microwave started flickering and almost became ablaze! I stopped it and started to freak out, because two days in a row was just not normal. So on Wednesday maintenance came out to fix the stove and take out the microwave and give us a new one, so hopefully we wouldn't have this problem again! Well a few day's pass and on Saturday we have the Baptist Interns over for lunch, so before then Me and Alex were straitening up the apartment, so I decided to do a load of laundry and threw it in the dryer right before everyone showed up. Well me and the other girls that live in the apartment have been noticing that it takes a long time for the dryer to dry the clothes, well since we moved in I had been trying to look for the lint trap and have never been able to find it. Well I finally found it along with a 9x13 cookie sheet size of lint that was about 3 inches thick. Melanie, one of the Baptist Interns told me and Alex about these people's houses that have burnt down because of dryer fires and that really could have been bad if we never found it. Well it doesn't end there even though I wish it did. On Saturday night the other roommates went out to the bars and got a little intoxicated, they came home and woke up me and Alex at about 3:30am well I decided to go out to the living room and ask them to be quite, well as I look into the kitchen area, the stove top is heavily on FIRE and they are just standing around laughing! Well with risk for my life I tell then to open the window and turn off the stove, by that time they were trying to blow out the fire with their mouths and I was wanting to get the extinguisher but it was under control. So then I tell them to head to bed and I go to mine. Well a few seconds later after laying down again the smoke detectors start going off and Alex then goes outside to check. She tells them to fan at the detectors and that was hopefully over. Well I got up at 6:30 the next morning to check the damage and while walking into the kitchen I saw a red light on coming from the stove... They left the stove burner on! So I find out that since we got out microwave taken to get another one, they really wanted to make popcorn so they turned on the stove and placed a bag of popcorn on top to cook... and that is what went up in flames! Thankfully we are all alive, there is no damage to the apartment and hopefully now this will be the end of our bad luck catching on fire streak! I know that I will think about this week later and just laugh at how truly strange it really was!