We're with the Band... and with anything else she chooses to do

"Well, if you like burgers, give 'em a try some time. Me, I can't usually get them 'cause my girlfriend's a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian." Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction

I like how Samuel L. Jackson delivers that piece of dialog, and I quote it quite a bit when people ask me how things at the high school are going. I'll say, "Well, you know that line in Pulp Fiction when Sam Jackson says... ? Well, Char is in marching band right now which pretty much means we're all in marching band right now." I'm usually talking to another a parent, and they'll know exactly what I mean. 

When your kid is in an activity, then you're mostly in it, too. 

Daphne and I aren't on the marching field, but we are with the band. 

If Char marched at the Friday night football game, then Daphne and I watched the half-time show from the sidelines. That's because we volunteered to pull and/or carry something on and off the field before and after the show. We also pulled and pushed multiple things back to the band room. Daphne and I did this at some of the Saturday marching band competitions, too. We even spent six hours in the concessions stand the Urbandale Marching Invitational. 

Volunteering is a big time commitment, but it's worth it because Char loves marching band. She has said so many times. 

I was discussing this with Charlotte's Japanese teacher when he said, "Yeah, about that time commitment. You know we have the Japanese exchange coming up, and I'm still looking for host families..." 

To make a long story short: Char is a student taking Japanese, so Daphne and I all took in two Japanese students for a week. 

My challenge is posting about their visit without showing pictures of their faces. (I didn't ask for their permission because that would have been weird.) So, we'll see how this goes. For the purpose of this post, I shall refer to the Japanese students as "the girls."

The students from Owa High School arrived via a bus from Chicago on a Tuesday afternoon. 

The Japanese students were 16 and 17 years old. I don't normally take pictures of shoes, but I liked how the girls lined them up when they would get home from school. Char's shoes are on the left.

Here the girls (including Ellie) are taking a break from carving pumpkins. They're watching Spirited Away. Char's head is on the left.

For two girls who had never carved a pumpkin before, their results were quite impressive. Char's pumpkin is on the left.

The girls wanted to experience a high school football game, so we moved movie night from Friday to Saturday. We checked out a couple of Blu-rays from the Urbandale Public Library, and I was impressed  with the number of languages that were available on each release. We watched The Lost City in Japanese with English subtitles. I think they liked it. It was hard to tell because they were so polite.

School activities for the girls included touring our state capitol and spending a day at Living History Farms. We took them to a Spirit Halloween store, Char's church youth group, Char's evening percussion party at school, a volleyball "tournament" where the girls got to play, a Leo Club tailgate, the football game, the Downtown Farmers' Market, the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, the Jordan Creek Mall, Sunday morning church, and the Hurt's Donut Co.  

The girls liked the doughnuts, but they later admitted they wanted to go for ice cream instead. That was an easy fix. We hit up a Baskins-Robbins on Sunday after church. I really like the retro VHS design on the Hurts Doughnut Company's boxes. 

I'm pretty sure the box's slogan, "It's a Jelly", is a reference to the movie Strange Brew.

Wow. Bob and Doug MacKenzie. That takes me back. But I digress...

Daphne bought a Halloween Witches' Tower Cookie kit for the girls to assemble.  Here are the parts for the kit.

And here is how they did. Looks good!

The girls were with us for six nights, and to be honest, it would have been okay if they stayed a few days more. All three seemed to become more and more comfortable with each other as time passed. By the last night, they were really having fun just hanging out and playing online games.

That went on for an hour and a half. Good times.

Hosting was a big time commitment, but it was worth it because Char loved having the girls stay with us. She has said so many times. I think the girls liked being with us as well. They both wrote very nice thank you notes in both English and Japanese, and Char has heard from both of them since they returned home.

High school activities. You don't pick them when you're a parent. They pick you. 

It's okay.

On to High School!

These are the shirts that the 8th graders are wearing today.

Severe weather and power outages couldn't keep Charlotte from celebrating her last day of middle school!

Honestly, Char is more than ready to transition to UHS. I'm the one who is on the fence about it. Having a daughter in high school makes me feel all that much older.

One thing is for sure. The drive to work will be more interesting...

Going Old School

I work in the "new" high school in Urbandale, Iowa. The building looks like this.

The "old" high school was torn down around 2009. This is what it looked like.

Originally built in 1959, the building was showing its age when I arrived in 1992. Seventeen years later, UHS was full of band-aid fixes. Plumbing pipes and electrical wires were exposed and hanging from the hallway ceilings. Snow and rain leaked through the skylights. The foreign language hall reeked of urine, and so did building's one elevator. Few of the bathroom stalls had doors. The difference in temperature between the first floor classrooms and the second floor classrooms could vary as much as twenty degrees.

Speaking of temperatures, the building's heat was lowered during the winter weekends, and that change often caused the posters taped to the walls to fall off. Did you know that cockroaches are attracted to the adhesive layer on tape? It was not unusual to walk into your classroom on Monday morning and find a poster on the ground with cockroaches stuck to a tape hoop. My hallway had a cockroach catching contest. The winner found five insects on one "You Can Read!" poster.

The building was also victim to several senior pranks that left a permanent mark. The crickets and mice that were mischievously released checked in, but never left - welcome to "The High School California."

The fact that large insects and rats lived in the walls of UHS made the rumors about the tunnels beneath the school even scarier. The tunnels were real. Throughout the building there were trap doors in the floor that lead to the spaces below. The tunnels were a way to access plumbing and electrical problems, but in the 70s when the building was cleaner, students would skip class by hiding in them.  Custodians would find candles, flashlights, playing cards, and cigarette butts down there.

Thirty years later, no one dared to even open the trap doors. The tunnels were said to be infested, full of rodent skeletons, and flooded in many areas. Just the smell could knock you out.

Mr. Bachmann teaches Japanese at the high school, and he made a movie trailer that spoofs scary movies by playing with the tunnel mythos. The video also features various UHS staff members. Bachmann did a great job on the trailer, and I want you to watch it. Actually, I want you to watch it twice.

During the first viewing, enjoy the trailer. During the second viewing,  look at the hallway floors and classroom carpet. Check out the pipes that hang next to the ceiling lights. Check out the rats nest of wires next to that printer. Look at how dark and depressing the place could be. UHS was actually a pretty good location for a horror movie. I suppose most old schools are.

I tend to be nostalgic, but I'm not when it comes to that old school.

(I do miss my old classroom, though...) 

Disheartening

Walking on down to the seventh-grade dance

And I don't know what we're going there for

No one's gonna talk to us, we'll look real silly

Just staring at the gymnasium floor

I'll wrestle the beat

With my two left feet

They'll point and they'll stare

At what my mom made me wear

Tomorrow I'll wake up

Crying and smiling

"Seventh Grade Dance" - Smash Mouth

My high school had a Valentine's Day tradition that was an ego-demolisher disguised as a fundraiser. The home economics department sold cookie tickets to the girls during Valentines week. They could buy a ticket for either a white cookie or a red cookie. They would then write down the name of the boy they wanted to give the cookie to on the ticket. The cookies would be delivered anonymously, so the girls could buy as many as they wanted. Some of the more popular guys would get four or five gifts.

The actual cookies would be placed in the hallway lockers during the last period on Friday. If you opened your locker and found a white cookie, that meant someone liked you. If there was a red cookie lurking inside, it meant someone loved you.

None of the guys acted as if getting cookies meant anything to them, but as we casually walked to our lockers, the question on all of our minds was, "How much love is in there?" 



I felt like a minor league player in the movie Major League. If there was a red ticket hanging in his locker at the end of practice, then that man's dreams of becoming a big league player were over.

Each year I did the same thing. I placed my hand on my locker's handle. I took a deep breath. Then I slowly opened the door. Each year there was the same number of cookies in my locker - zero. Apparently, "Brent" is a hard name to spell.

High school can be a lonely time for some people.

Hitching a ride to the high school dance

And I don't know what we're going there for

The girls are so pretty in their shopping mall fashions

And we're so invisible to them

I feel like I'm in

Some John Hughes film

Like a dream we've all had

Where you can't run too fast

Tomorrow we'll wake up

Crying and smiling

"Seventh Grade Dance" - Smash Mouth

Fast forward that song to 2016. 

I no longer sneer at Valentine's Day cards. In fact, I just got one that I'll probably keep forever.

As for cookies, Daphne's newest hobby is baking.

My locker runneth over.

I hope you will have a Happy Valentine's day, too!

Smash Mouth - Seventh Grade Dance link