The muggies of summer are back.

If you have been reading this since last summer, you know that I really dislike humid weather.

It is worse when you have to dress up and look professional like I have to for teaching my class. I hate being constantly moist and sticky.

The room where I teach has a/c, but it happens to blow straight down on the students, which is very unpleasant. However, if we turn it off, I see them begin to wilt very quickly. There does not seem to be a happy in between.

-----------

Tomorrow I am taking my students to the mall. They are going to do an observation exercise - at least that is what they are supposed to do. The distractions that they will face there are many. We will see how much work they do and how much money they spend by the end of the day.

-----------

This is the country we live in: Last week, I took my students to a daycare center and a youth camp (again, they had to do some anthropological observation exercises there). At the daycare center, the teachers were adamant about not letting the children exhibit any form of violent play. No pretend guns, shooting, chasing, or fighting. At times such impositions seemed excessive. I thought to myself, is this being too sensitive to political and social pressures.

My question was answered with a resounding no the following day at the youth camp. The students were broken down into small groups and assigned to observe specific groups of children doing different camp activities. One group of students had to observe the youth camp equivalent of "The Lord of the Flies." The children turned to my students and started threatening them almost immediately. "We are going to get you. We are going to kill you!" They yelled at my students as they pretended to fire imaginary guns at them. If this was not scary enough, this group of campers were going to do archery. The camp counselors did absolutely nothing about the children's behavior. I believe this is because they resented the presence of my students as well. Oh yeah, this was a YMCA camp - so much for Christian values of peace and kindness.

-----------

A funny incident from the daycare center. I have a tendency to mishear song lyrics and make up silly alternatives in my head. When I first heard "Cold Hard Bitch" by Jet, I thought they were saying "One eyed bitch," whatever that meant. I finally figured out what they were saying.

After this, when I was at the daycare, a girl was drawing a picture when a boy came up to him and asked what she was drawing.

"It's a dog," she replied.

"Your dog, he only has one eye!" cried the boy.

"This dog is not a boy dog, it is a girl dog! And yeah, it does have only one eye, so what?"

My first thought was that the girl must have also listened to the Jet song and heard the same lyrics I did.

Probably not.