Surviving the second grade

That's right, Monday I survived the second grade. It was tough and I did a lot of reading, but I made it through the day. High five for me! And then today I survived 2 classes of 6th grade science and one of 8th grade science. Ah, the life of a sub at a small school overseas. This school has elementary, middle and high school all in one, so I am able to sub any and all grades.

So, back tracking a little, here is my snack from Sunday while working at my computer. I needed a little sugar booster and I love Swedish fish.

Boy was I glad Ryan got super hungry, so hungry that he made some pasta for late lunch/early dinner. The best part...leftovers for lunch on Monday.

Last night we watched a movie and these seemed like a nice treat. Still lovin' the TJ's snacks I brought back.
Yes, they were tasty.

Lots of cream filling.

This is how I was greeted this morning when I took the dog outside. Very close to the area where I send the dog to do her business. Luckily with the time change it is not as dark as it was before and I could see the cow before it startled me. They are certainly getting bigger in size. They are only 5 months old.

For lunch today I hoped to meet up with Ryan but he had a class and couldn't make it at the same time I was off, so I went by myself. I went with the buffet and was glad to get some salad in. Not the best salad bar ever, but trust me the TORC buffet boosts the best salad bar on base.

Yes, I scored some fat-free dresing today. Too bad the sodium is pretty darn high.

Go figure, it was taco Tuesday! Isn't it taco Tuesday everywhere today? So I made a little burrito, some spanish rice, corn and black bean salsa and guacamole.

Ok, ok, it was a buffet, and I love this cake. Who wouldn't want a checkerboard cake?

Now, I just wanted to share a little about one of my "hobbies"...DVD collecting and watching. Lets start with TV series. When we like a show we usually buy it on DVD and watch on episode every night before bed. We have watched most of these except for the most recent season.

Another favorite. Yep, we watched all 3 seasons.

Whoa, this is one of the greatest shows ever. Just finished watching the most recent season (5 I think). We don't get current episodes here so we are waiting for this year to end (hehe, we have some major waiting to do).

Our other favorite is 30 Rock and we are getting up to date on that too. Just in the middle of season 3.

Here is our latest and most expensive "hobby". Ryan and I were watching the Academy Awards 2 years ago and they did a montage of all the past winners for Best Picture. There were so many movies we had never even heard of, so we decided to start collecting. We got off to a slow start, but here is what we have so far.

Ryan bought me this for my UNLV graduation and it lists all the winndes in order. We are sticking to just best picture. This book is older, but I searched online to make sure my list (haha, it's a wish list on half.com so I know the order and what we have purchased) is up to date.

This past week we watched Cimarron and over the past 2 days we watched Grand Hotel. I wanted to tell everyone about how great these movies were so I thought I would also mention our collection and hobby of watching these greats. I loved both of these movies and those we have watched already. I think this movie watching should take us some time and keep us busy on the island.

Last but not least...I bought this recently and I am planning on making my first loaf this weekend. This came with so many recipes, but I think I am going to keep it simple. I'll keep you posted!

QUESTION: What are some of your hobbies?

Happy Halloween and catch up time

First off, Happy Halloween! I hope everyone had a safe and fun night yesterday. I will get to ours in just a moment, but first I wanted to play catch up since I am a little behind on sharing my photos.

Thanks everyone for the great ideas on uses for pencils. I will say some of those we came up with in our class, but there were some you shared that we did not think of. Hope you had fun with the brainstorming activity.

Thursday night I finally decided to make this pizza that has been in my freezer for a while. Gotta love Amy's!

What I really liked was that I was able to eat the other half for lunch the next day while I was at the high school. I really like cold pizza and this definitely tasted good cold.
Last week I also had the chance to stop by our landlord's market to pick up some bread for Ryan to use for garlic bread. They were doing an Italian lunch at work and Ryan was making the garlic bread. So I bought some rolls.
As well as a loaf of bread.
Then these caught my eye. These are premixed tuna salad with olive oil and veggies with the tuna. I thought they would be good inside a pita, and would make a nice lunch when I am at work. I'll let you know how they taste once I give them a try.
Oh yeah, I'm addicted...

Betcha thought I meant to coffee now...nope, just sudoku.

Ok, now we are caught up to Halloween day. We did a late lunch at A Porta (across from the base) just before it was time to get ourselves dressed up.

Yes, that is spreadable cheese food in a container similar to the butter packets. I will say this is actually very good.

This time we went with the margherita instead of a fried garlic pizza. I love that they dress the pizza with olives.

Then it was time to dress the dog. That's right, this year she is a bunny. No bee costume for her this time. As usual she is very unhappy with the idea of being dressed up. So this didn't last for very long.

I am not sure why, but the body part fits and the head is WAY to big. What kind of dog was supposed to fit in this part of the costume? It ended up being more like a hoodie zip sweatshirt.

But what a cute little bunny tail.

Awwwwww

No need for a costume here, she is already as scary as you can get for this holiday. I should point out she is actually hiding under a table. Scaredy cat!!!

And if you want to see something really scary, look what's crawling all over my back yard. Ewww, I hate the rain.

Here I am...not so scary!

But here is Ryan, who is VERY SCARY!!!

We went down to where he works on base for the squadron party. Look how creative people were with brining in desserts.

What a clever way to decorate rice pudding.

But, good news, they also served dinner (hot dogs and hamburgers) and had a nice looking veggie platter.

Then it was time for trick-or-treating for the kids. Those who have offices in this building decorated their offices (most with a theme) and set out candy for the kids. These kids went crazy since they could go back as many times as they wanted until all the candy was gone.

Here are some pictures from the various offices.

One was decorated like the office from Harry Potter.

Yes, floating candles, how cool.

And the trap door, which was the exit.

This is inside Ryan's office. They built a maze out of garbage bags to separate the path. Ryan would jump out in his scary costume. I helped point the kids in the right direction.

This was another office, set up like the Wizard of Oz.

Jackpot! This is where we located candy long after the kids stopped looking and went out for a hay ride.

The last of the offices.

Then we came home, watched a zombie movie and enjoyed this nice beer. If you have never had Chimay before I suggest you give a try at least once. This beer is blessed by Buddhist monks. They do serve it at places in the states, but at the Expo we found a vendor with it and so we bought a few bottles.

So that was it for our first Halloween overseas. They did a lot of great activities around base to give the kids an awesome Halloween. They also built a crazy haunted house in an empty building on the base. It was super scary. they recreated scenes from various horror movies. I think the scariest was the scene from the ring with the little girl in from of the TV with static that turns around and slowly crawls at you. Um, yeah, they totally did that and it was so scary. This was better than some professional ones I have been too. It was insane, and we had so much fun.

I also learned that the Portugese kids will go around tonight asking for candy, but that they do not get dressed up and do scary things.

QUESTIONS: First off, how was your Halloween? Second, do you like cold pizza?

Put on your thinking hats!

All of them!

Well, one at a time that is.

Now I know you are wondering "what is she talking about". Yes, it's a problem solving technique. The topic I was assigned for my research was Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. This problem solving technique will ensure that you ask the right questions in your situation, and all of them.

So, in an effort not to bore you all I will keep this short, but still give you enough information that you can try this out the next time you are working through a problem.

WHITE HAT: This is the fact finding stage. What is known about the situation or problem? This is an objective hat. Only facts.

YELLOW HAT: This is the positive hat. What is positive about the situation, the proposed solution, or the what is done correctly do far? Advantages. Keep it positive.

RED HAT: This is for feelings and emotions. This can be anger, like red might make you feel, but also happiness, sadness, excitement. Let your true feelings shine while wearing this hat. How do you feel about the situation?

BLACK HAT: Here's where you play the devil's advocate. While yellow was positive, this hat is negative. What are some of the risks of the solution?

GREEN HAT: This hat is for your creative side. Think outside the box. Present new ideas and look at things from a different perspective. This hat allows for growth and expansion on the ideas.

BLUE HAT: This is for a calming effect. Throw on this hat if someone in the group is getting too into their own hat, like the emotions are flowing high with a red hat on. This is also a center of focus, it brings the group back so everyone is on the same page.

What is nice about this technique is that every gets to wear each of the hats, meaning everyone can experience the problem solving from a variety of angles and perspectives. You don't just weat one hat for the entire problem solving session, you switch between them.

This is just a quick run down of the idea, but it has been very successful in a lot of major companies, as well as in the classroom. So, if you are interested in a fun way to look at problem solving, give this a try. For more information just google six thinking hats and you will be amazed at the amount of information you will find.

Ok, so happy Friday to everyone. I finished my second week of subbing. This week was high school math and physics. What I learned this week is that I really need to brush up on my math. How coukd it have been one of my fave subjects in high school and I can barely remember geometry. Whew, I am glad I get the weekend to rest my brain. I am subbing 2nd grade on Monday and middle school on Tuesday, so I am looking forward to this new adventure.

Ah, and let's not forget that I have some pictures to share. the other day I was running errands and I just had to snap this shot to share with everyone. This is taken on base from a high up point on the base, overlooking the ocean. I love this view. I will admit sometimes I get side tracked and just stop and stare at the ocean below. I usually stand here when trying to spot whales.
I took my dog the other day to get groomed and couldn't resist buying her one of these treats. She loved it!

And now she looks (and smells!) so much better! I love that they gave her a bandana.
And, last but not least, my new fave yogurt. This was raspberry. I like the part where I get to mix it in myself. It's very interactive!
QUESTIONS: One of the activities we did in creative problem solving was to come up (yes it was a timed activity) with as many uses for a pencil as we could think of. So get creative and share with me some of your most creative uses for a pencil. Here are a few to get you started...hole poker, toe separator (when painting toe nails), and dart. Now, take a break from your busy schedule, take a deeo breath and give yourself 5 or so minutes to come up with some creative uses for a pencil.

Just a quick hello

I hope everyone enjoyed those lateral thinking puzzles. They really make you stop and think. We are set in our ways and our one track thinking and we look for similarities in things without often stopping to think that it might be different from our preconceived ideas. I think our busy schedules fuel that fire. This class in creative problem solving really gave me a new perspective and I am happy to be free now to think "outside the box".

So right now I am using a computer at the community center here on base, so sorry, no pictures on this post. I don't have any access here. I am actually on a free period from subbing for high school math/physics this week and I ran out to do a quick errand on base and was TEMPTED by the computers with free internet access, so I just have a few minutes to say hello and I have not forgotten about all of you.

As soon as I have some more time I am going to post with my problem solving technique that I did my class report on last week. It was developed by the same guy that came up with lateral thinking and I think you will really find this technique fun too. There is a creat book by Higgins called 101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques. Amazon is selling it for $12.50 plus shipping. If you work somewhere that you are often confronted with problems or are in a managerial position and sometimes problems present themselves or you need new ideas, you might want to get a copy of this book for your office. Not only was it a text book in our class, but I have heard from some people that they already use this tool. I can't believe I didn't know about this before, like say in college, where I always had something come up that needed to be solved. Great book, and very colorful!

So, next I wanted to mention something else that I noticed here. Since I have been subbing for the majority of the past 2 weeks I have paid attention to the morning announcements. During this time they announce the school meal. While I notice there is no breakfast program (this school is small and most kids live directly behind the school in base housing), the lunch program sounds well organized. I assume this is DOD schools everywhere and the general menu planning, but keep in mind this is a small island and we only get food shipments every so often.

Let's take today for example...I heard them mention carrot sticks with fat-free ranch dip and fresh fruit. Other times I hear salad (including a chef salad), whole wheat wraps, baked chiken and there is always fruit on the menu. When I think back to my days in HS this was not the typical fare. I am very impressed byt the menu offerings here since they don't get much choice past one or two entrees. Well, they can always rbing from home. One student I noticed brings food that she reheats in a microwave she has access to. So I think school lunches are a lot different that what I remember.

What about all of you, do you know what they offer for school lunches around you? Do you think American schools are heading in the right direction? Or is it that they just offer some seemingly healthy choices on occasion to keep up a healthy appearance?

Have a great day! I am back to work now.