Peanut Butter Jelly with a Baseball Bat

They managed to maintain their mostly endearing qualities through out a long and painful trip to the Bronx Zoo. MFT and I shared a big yellow bus, our two homerooms "battling" with freestyle rhymes to try and "dis" the other class. [Note: I feel compelled to put words like battle and dis in quotes to avoid sounding like a really lame white person which I'm pretty sure succeeds in doing the exact opposite] I'm pretty sure Sariah is going to be a professional diva someday--she led the group with the rap she made up for our class in December, while my class kept the beat and danced in the background.

A sampling [with the name of my school deleted]:

"When we walking down the street,
people wanna meet us.
Even blind people on the bus,
notice us.
We got knowledge
We go to college
Yellow shirt, blue shirt
You don't see no dirt
'cause we _____ everyday
We gonna stay that way"

Then we moved on to the strangely appealing Peanut Butter Jelly song which got everyone pretty riled up and loud. MFT and I got them to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in a round, and they sang their own interpretations of The Wheels on the Bus. But the "battle" got a little crazy when they started quoting songs and slapping the bus seats to beats from songs which they changed the words to in order to insult each other. By the time we arrived at the zoo, I was confident that my homeroom is superior [although MFT's homeroom is mostly my Advisory girls, so I like them too].

I was hoping to take my group off on my own, with Chanya's mom [one-eyed-scary-lady] as a chaperone, and avoid the masses of other kids from our schools. But our parent coordinator somehow caught my class up with 2 other classes and I was stuck in the chaos all day.

A brief sampling of events from our trip:

1) Despite directions on the entrance sign to "World of Darkness" that indicated a 1:3 adult to student ratio, a mandatory volume control [these animals are particularly sensitive to sound and vibration], and an extreme darkness warning, our 3 classes charged inside, virtually unsupervised, and began to scream at the top of their lungs, running like mad through the 100 yard pitch black hallway filled with bat exhibits. It was bright enough outside that you couldn't really see anything inside at all and there we are trying to "chaperone." Most of them ran through at lightning speed while others had to be rescued afterwards, lingering in the corners of the bat windows. I could swear I saw 2 of our kids making out in a corner.

2) The Woman With No Time [new teacher] was taking her kids around asking them to pick up samplings of nature, including flowers, rocks, dirt, and twigs. One of her boys pulled up a bamboo shoot and like 10 of them stole daffodils. Isn't the park a nature preserve? I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed to take the nature home with you. I mean, what's next? "Honey, go get one of those mice from the Mouse House... They wont notice one missing, and we can analyze its bone structure when we return to class!"

3) Chanya's Mom threw a tantrum [truly, she stomped her feet and clenched her fists] because we didn't go to the butterfly house because it cost money and our kids spent all their cash on junk food for lunch. "But I. Wanna. Go. To. The. Butterfly. House." I had to take her aside and say "We cannot go to the Butterfly House because not all of the children have money left over and it has to be fair for everyone." She pouted for the rest of the trip.

4) Brandon spilled hot chocolate. On a baby. No joke. He was horsing around with Laquan and then tripped and spilled it on a baby. I was not there for this, and it's a good thing because I might have killed him.

5) In the Reptile House, we saw a giant snake, probably a Boa Constricter? This boy Jesse was banging on the glass like a moron. I don't know him very well, save for stupid things like that that I see him do in the hallways sometimes. I went up to him and said "Haven't you ever seen Harry Potter, Jesse?" "Uh, yeah." I raise my eyebrows at him. "How are you certain that I don't have magical powers that will vaporize this thick window of glass and send you tumbling inside to chill with the boa?" "You don't have magical powers. Whatever." But he stopped. I think I made him a little afraid.

Be back in approximately 12 days when my vacation is over and the 9 week countdown to the end of the year begins.