Best First Day of School Ever
Not many people get the luxury of looking forward to the start of school. Other than seeing friends missed over the three month break, there’s not too much calling us back. With the looming knowledge of the work ahead, students hang there heads as the trudge to class. In my opinion the reason students fall behind in classes is because of the monotony forced on us by our school system. Our mind is already made up about how a class will go when we walk into our lecture, witch makes it easy to tune out.
Now, even though I’m half way across the world, it never crossed my mind that classes would, or even could, be any different. Just because I’m in a cool country doesn’t mean the schooling is any less painful. I was wrong.
Sure we have four hours of lecture to start the day, but it’s different. There isn’t any one standing in front of a sea of people, going through motions. The teacher, as well as the students, get excited about what’s on the agenda.
We take a half hour lunch break before meeting by the bus, for our weekly field trip. This isn’t so much of a bus as a glorified van, with a sign on the side stating “We’re Tourists! Excited over your most common staples! don’t worry about the astonished looks as you drive by, on the wrong side of the road!” or something to that extent.
Anyways the drive up to the rain-forest was a beautiful one, or so I’m told. I fell asleep. As hard as I tried to shake the jet lag it caught up to me at the most inopportune time. But no worries I caught more than a glimpse on the way back. After I was jolted out of my slumber/seat, I saw that we were in beautiful mountains in the rain-forest. And on a road that looked, and felt, as if the only beating it had taken, comparable to the one it was currently receiving, would be the occasional kangaroo stampede, though I'm not completely sure this phenomenon has ever really occurred.
As we pulled into our destination, all of us successful at keeping our lunches down and organs in place, it was all we could do to not fall out of the bus.
We were at a little school tucked neatly away in the mountains surrounding Mt. Warning, a once active volcano that could possibly be credited for the landscape of this part of Australia. They had made us a “Bush Tackle Lunch” I’m still not sure why it was given such a name. What it consisted of was a sample of kangaroo and crocodile meat, pasta, bread, prunes, and native nuts. Although I didn’t find my self jumping for joy at the thought of eating the australian coat of arms, I still wasn’t going to pass up the chance to try something new. So I tried it, and can now say with confidence, the bread and pasta was awesome!
After our meal we went and learned a little about the area before going out to test our hunting skills. I think the boomerang is the only known weapon with the words “flick it” in the instructions on how to use it. It’s hard to believe that the toy I was then holding in my hand was designed to decapitate your dinner. And now have trying it, I know I couldn’t throw it hard enough to make a dent in a marshmallow, let alone kill and animal.
When we stopped playing with guns, so to speak, we went into the rain forest to learn about a few of the painful ways you can die in this magnificent country. We ended up finding a plant, that if ran into it’s invisible needles cause such intense pain, it’s been known to drive people to commit suicide. I stayed on the path. We were warned about all the dangers around us and then taken through a part of forest to find a massive tree, being swallowed by another tree. Just when I was about to add trees to the list of things to steer clear of while I’m here, I was reassured that trees are very unlikely to swallow humans. Good to know.
