Summer school is drawing to a close. It has been a wonderful experience with plenty of good memories. The field trip we took today was definitely memorable - but perhaps not great.
The trip sounded so simple in theory. Take a bus to a town about 30 miles away, take a ride on an old railroad (this is "Transportation" week), then ride the bus back home.
Things started out pretty typically. I got the kids from the cafeteria, everyone put on the matching shirts we wear on field trips, we got 13 sack lunches, and 13 milks (3 white, 8 chocolate and 2 strawberry) and we headed to the bus. Everyone was in great spirits as we rode on the bus. After a while, I began to think the ride was taking quite a while... and after checking with the other teachers, we realized we were already 20 miles past our destination. Problem 1. Easy enough to solve - I called the school office and got an address for the train station, then used the navigation function on my phone (thank goodness I had recently added that to my phone plan!) to get us to the station. We were about 30 min. late but since everyone on the train was from our school, they had waited for us. We rushed to our seats on the train and eagerly began our journey.
We had been riding along, enjoying the scenery, for about 10 min. when one of my newcomers looked at me and said "Ms?... sick...?" Problem 2. Luckily the lovely stewardess on the train brought us a bucket and after sitting in the "lounge" area of the train for a few min, my sick friend said she felt better and we returned to our seats. Moments after sitting down, the lights flickered, then went out, then the train slowed down... and stopped. The stewardess assured us it was just a brief problem - the driver just had to jump start the train and we would be on our way again.
She was right - we were soon on our way. We enjoyed about 10 min of a peaceful ride before...2 other newcomers motioned that they were feeling sick (funny how some signs are international). So... off the the lounge I went with 2 more children and a bucket. Thus passed a good chunk of the trip - me and my 3 sick kids going back and forth to the lounge with the trusty bucket. While I was busy dealing with the sick kids, the train broke down again... but this time when they jump started it, they were unable to restart the air-conditioning. The high today was 103. No windows on the train would open. It... was... HOT! But, we made paper fans, and covered our faces with wet paper towels, and plowed on!
While riding on a train was a great experience, no one was too bummed when the ride ended. We thanked out conductor and stewardess, and headed to a park near the train for a late lunch. By this point though, the heat was really getting to the kids. One (more) child got sick (from the heat this time) and started a chain reaction. In somewhat of panic mode by the time, we loaded everyone back on the bus ("we" being my kids and the 2 classes of 1st grade we were sharing a bus with). I asked the bus driver to stop at a near by gas station so we could get water. As luck would have it, the only form of water they had was individual bottles, so I bought 59 of those and handed them out to the poor kids. In an effort to get people's minds off our troubles,we started a sing along which did lift a lot of spirits.
I had been providing our principal and vice principal with updates throughout the day so they were very glad to see us finally pull back up to the school in one piece. They met us at the door with Popsicles and ice-water. I doubt that is a field trip that my school will ever attempt again, but it was memorable. I hope the students remember our adventures today if the prompt for the state writing test next year is "write about a day when everything went wrong"!
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