Stepping Out of the Boat

Every since the start of November there has been a reading contest going on within the elementary. The winners were the classes, in each grade, that read the most minutes over the five week contest. Me being the Language teacher I was in charge of collecting the reading logs and recording the minutes of both 6th grade classes each week. After the five weeks were over 6B, which is my homeroom, had the most minutes and won the contest in the sixth grade. The prize for winning this contest was never really relayed to me, I just knew that the winning class was going to be able to leave school for an afternoon and do something such as bowling or have a pizza party.
On Friday I was approached by the 5th grade Language teacher, who was in charge of the entire contest as well as the rewards, and asked if it would be alright for my class to receive their prize on Wednesday of this week. To any other educator reading this blog a 2 day notice for a surprise field trip might seem crazy but here in the D.R. that is equivalent to 2 months. So today was the day.
Now remember what I mentioned earlier, I had nothing to do with the prizes in this contest so I assumed that everything was getting taken care of by the 5th grade teacher.....foolish me. Yesterday one of my students mentioned to me the fact that they should have permission slips if they were going to be leaving the school. Silly me I thought that this key piece of the puzzle had already been taken care of. So after mentioning it to the office last period yesterday the permission slips were delivered to the room and the students were told to have them filled out last night and brought back today so that they could go. I thought that there was no chance that everyone was going to bring back that slip on one days notice.
Surprisingly everyone did bring the slips in today so we were ready to go....now if I only knew when were were leaving, where we were going, or when we were coming back we would have been in business. Finally at around 10 this morning I found out that they we were going to be leaving right after lunch around noon. It was almost comical how little I knew and how little everyone else did as well.
After lunch the kids were really ready to go... if only we had transportation we would have. At noon today I found out that instead of getting a bus parents were supposedly contacted and asked if they could drive students to the location (which I still wasn't exactly sure of). After doing some last minute running around I worked it out so my class could cram into the vehicles that were there to take the 5th grade class that we were going with. I being in the last car to leave the school with another teacher and a few students now had a new problem. The problem this time was nobody in the car knew how to get to the place that we were going and everyone else had already taken off. So we as well took off in hopes to catch up to the car that had left ahead of us. I being in the passenger seat was in charge of finding this car and then keeping an eye on it as it weaved in and out of the craziest driving you can imagine.... oh did I mention that just as we were leaving the school it started to downpour. Luckily we found the car and were able to follow it to the location which turned out to be a children's fitness center. After we circled the block looking for a place to park and then ran through the rain trying unsuccessfully not to get soaked we were finally there....then the rain stopped.
Picture in your mind what a gym would look like and then if possible think of the exact opposite of that, this is the place that we were in today. The room we were in was about half the size of a basketball court and if I would have jumped my head would have hit the ceiling. They had an obstacle course type thing with balance beams, rope ladders, and monkey bars set up in the room as well as a stereo with music playing. This was more than enough for the kids to have a great time. The person in charge would give them challenges to do on the course and then they did some aerobic exercises and like always some random running around. The students had a good time, the teacher on the other had were stuck sitting for two hours in the little waiting room they had out front. I did go back for awhile and watch what the students were doing but it was a long boring afternoon.
The trip back was a little less stressful than the ride over but we did cut it awful close as we arrived back to school just as the bell rang. It was certainly an adventure and just another example of how things are done around here.