Opposites.

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On top of Purgatory

As has no doubt been mentioned on several occasions...I am a desert dweller.  Perhaps more correctly high desert.  I believe there is nothing more majestic than the Rocky Mountains and and crisp beautiful day with very little oxygen flowing through my body at the altitude at home.  I did also find majesty in the fields of poppies that grow wild in El Paso, and the saguaro cacti that peppered the landscape in Phoenix.  But the mountains and the beauty of mountain life will forever be where my heart lives.

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Teaching in the desert brought with it some unique stories as well as some entertaining moments that fill my memory banks.  For example, I distinctly remember one afternoon at "the LJ" as we called it (La Joya), where the students were at lunch (in and of itself chaotic and highly entertaining on any given day).

On one  particular day there was nothing unusual, students got their lunch some ate inside some were eating outside under the ramada - chatting with friends, listening to music, texting, etc.  All of a sudden, as sometimes happens in the desert, the sky opened up and down came a flash burst of rain.  The kind of rain that has big old F-A-T raindrops and soaks the entire place.  I remember how chaotic the scene became fueled by the claps of thunder and bolts of lightening splitting the sky.

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Kids were running for shelter, most of them were soaked clean-through, I even heard a random "oh no, my weave, my weave!".  The remainder of the day had me cast in the role of "kid-wrangler" and "manager-of-the-twirly-beasts".  Cloudy and rainy had a euphoric effect which induced a mania - needless to say I was never more happy for the bell to ring that afternoon!

Here, on the island of misfit toys, the exact opposite is effect.  The population here gets rain, wind, sideways rain, upside down rain, followed by more wind, and then 282,000 more days of RAIN.  It is truly a rarity that the sun makes an appearance.  Apparently, this "winter" has been exceptionally weird (as is told by those who have lived here forever) that there has been more wind and rain than in a typical winter.  This week we had two weekend days and two school days where the sun was out and it was...sublime!

One never knows when leaving the house what the weather is going to be for the day.  One, the forecast for this island is rarely correct and two, the sun is not up until almost 9:30.  So, when daylight approached on Thursday and the sun bashfully peeked up we were trepidatious about believing that the sun would REMAIN out.  However, as the day progressed a sort of buzz was felt throughout the school and kids were twirly and each of them described what they would do the split-second the bell rang.  Cries of "I can't wait to get out on the four-wheeler" or "I'm gonna go down by the beach" and (my personal favorite) "Let's go see if we can get a buffalo"...were heard echoing down the hallway and in my classroom.  The sun, it seems, had the same effect the rain did on the students in Phoenix.  Euphoria!  


Believe me, the students took FULL advantage - the outcome: not an assignment one, was ready to go for Friday and vocabulary tests were BOMBED across the land!









In search of the elusive Vitamin D,

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