Field Trip to Danger!

Hi y'all.

On Wednesday, I did something pretty fun - and a little scary. I accompanied 50 eigth-graders to upstate New York. Can you imagine?! The day was pretty interesting, so I will chronicle it here.

I had to be at school by 8:45 so we could leave on time - which we didn't! After an intro in the auditorium we all filed outside and piled on the coach bus. Note: coach bus is the nicer alternative to a yellow bus. Thank gawd. Of course, I'm all nervous that some kid is going to barf, but lucky for me, that did not happen. What did happen, though, was that there were 50 screaming eighth-graders and man are they loud. I can't tell you how many times we had to ask them to be quiet, patrol the aisle of the bus and relocate bad kids. It was exhausting.

After taking nearly an hour to get out of Manhattan, we finally arrived at the nature center. From that point, we split up into smaller groups and did a hike around the lake. That was probably the best part of the day because it was really nice out and there was so much green everywhere. Also my nerdy girl students picked me as their leader which was cute. After the hike, I tried to relax, but instead all the students were running away from bees and acting like they were going to die. When I couldn't take it anymore, I noticed a field not far away and so we all went over there. It's great when city kids get out in this much open space - actually it's hilarious. Many of them are so "city" that they thought we were going to see bears! They also kept checking for ticks because they thougtht they might get lyme disease. LOL! When we were in the field, they had some fun rolling down it (my suggestion) and generally chasing each other.

The science class portion of the day was boring so I'll just skip that. ON TO THE DANGER! OK, so we were supposed to take another hike back around the lake to get back to the bus, but instead the bus had to come get us. Why? Because the park rangers reported that there was an impending severe thunderstorm and tornado watch, and they didn't want that kind of liability. The bus picked us back up and we took a harrowing ride back to the nature center to pick up the other section of our group. We're talking little tiny roads on a huge Greyhound-style bus. It was so freaky! And the bus driver! He was not havin' it. At the nature center, we picked up the other section, and the park ranger came out and said something like, "If you get stuck or run into really bad weather, come back here for shelter." I was like, "What?!" Why would we need "shelter" - that sounds serious! She confirmed that there was a tornado watch. Good grief. About two seconds later, it started raining like crazy - just in time for us to take another tiny road out of the park. At this point, I'm white-knuckling the seat in front of me, the driver is shaking his head and saying he's never coming up here again, and the science teacher is trying to keep everybody happy. Right about then the thunder and lightning starts and every single adolescent on the bus screams bloody murder. I literally heard one girl yell, "I don't want to die!" Oy vey...

As we try to settle the kids down so the bus driver can think (and not kill us) we round the next bend in the road and are stopped in our tracks. What's the problem? There is a giant tree in the middle of the road! Not only that, it's hanging off of some power lines. Why me?! So the teachers get out and we assess the situation: bad. The driver is indignant; he refuses to try to turn the bus around, but I don't blame him. We realize after some time that we are stuck there until the local authorities show up. They finally come and tell us it's going to be "a while" because every road is blocked with fallen trees. At this point, I hear the storm warning horn-thing go off and I think of Arkansas and tornado warnings. Basically, I just blocked that out because there was just too much other stuff to deal with. No tornado ever showed up - in fact, it stopped raining soon afterwards.

After about thirty minutes we see this guy rounding the corner carrying a chainsaw. We jump off the bus and thank him, explaining that we can't get past or back up. He chops up the tree to the kids' total amazement and applause. As I am helping to clear bits of tree from the road, I'm thinking, this is the craziest field trip ever...but at least no one barfed!

And we all lived happily ever after...