First Day of School

A couple of quick stories about my first day at Kihei Charter School. I'll go in chronological order. The first one happened about 20 minutes into the day. All the kids were dropped off by the parents, we hoarded them into vans and drove to the high school (as I mentioned before, our facilities aren't ready until Monday). So we get there, go into the auditorium and start playing a game - a warm-up activity that also gets us to introduce ourselves. We're all seated in chairs except for one person in the middle who says "My name is Billy and I like...." and whatever Billy likes (or is), everyone who is the same has to get out of their chairs and run to a different chair. Which means there will always be one person left standing and that person is next. My name is Becky and I'm....

So we're doing this for about 10 minutes and I'm sitting next to this really little girl. I forgot that sixth graders can be this small. She looks at me really disappointed and says, "If I get out there no one's going to like what I like."

"Why? What is it you like?"

"Coding in html." [web page speak]

I swear...I almost said "I love you." It was right on the tip of my tongue. But I decided that it would be an inappropriate thing to say to an eleven year old child who I had just met a half-an-hour ago.

So when we were finished in the auditorium, we had to leave as the high schoolers had to eat lunch there. We loaded up the vans and drove to the Kihei Youth Center. We split up into two groups to do that I Went To The Beach And Brought A... game. (I brought Atias' Amazing Orangutan) As we got out of the vans and were walking to the field, I looked out and saw the ocean. We were maybe 150 yards from the shore. There's a mountain to the right (with beautiful windmills) that looked like something out of a Bob Ross painting...with wisps of clouds. And the first thing that popped into my head was:

How the hell did I get here?

That's when it really hit me - what I was doing. I was on a tropical island teaching 50 slightly spastic kids. THIS is why I went to college.

Of course the day's over, I'm exhausted and I have my own version of Moe, Larry & Curly who I have to give private van riding lessons to tomorrow because they can't seem to figure out how to behave in a van. Pretty freakin cool.