Pirates of the Carribean

Pirates of the Carribean, that's been the Junior High theme this semester. Its easy to tie projects into pirates for geography, social studies, language arts, art, ethics, but of course what about science. Then it occured to me. All semester we've been studying chemistry and physics. Chemical reactions, Newtons laws of motion, and projectile motion. What did the pirates have that included all of these things. Cannons of course! However, a big old metal cannon with real gun powder is hard to come by. But a potato cannon can be built with parts from your local hardware store. So yes this is the final project of the year folks! Pray for safety as we build and hopefully get to launch them.

Sorry its been such a long time since I've wrote, but when we got back from samana, we were busy all week with presentations, the getting caught back up in the classroom, then we ended up having a whole week off. Thanks to the true democracy that has been around for less than 10 years. We had the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday free, for voting and traveling days, since some people have to travel to their "home town" to vote. Its very hard to change your identification here, ie home address. Anyway we were suppose to have school that thursday and friday, but do to a very close election for mayor, and the sketchy practice of buying votes from the poor. School was cancelled on Thursday and Friday for safety, since there was massive partying in the streets and fear of potential riots from the losing party. However it ended up being safe. And last week I was very busy with my cannon prototype, accidentally burning off my eyelashes, and writing articles for our school yearbook/newspaper whatever its called.

Know that I miss y'all, that its hotter than satan's butt here, and I will be on American soil June 10th!
Love
Andrew

Survivor

Here's a picture from my training for my debut on survivor. Let me just tell you that camping, and living on a beach are no cup of tea. Neither is the attempts at swimming and being athletic in the ocean tides. That was with flippers. The sun is draining and the sand is hot. Stay out of the sun and try not to work. Needless to say hopefully this picture will get me one step closer to that million bucks.

Life is going well here. Less than six short weeks until I get to come to the states. I know it will be here before I know it. I'm still undecided about what I will be doing come next fall. Keep that it your prayers. Also that I may finish my time here strong and lovingly. I miss yall and hope to see you soon.
Andrew

Ms. Frizzle

So, I don't know what you guys think of when I say the name Ms. Frizzle, but if it sparks your memory to your childhood days and the beloved Magic School Bus series, then you hit the nail on the head. Last week, I felt like I was in some way related to Ms. Frizzle. We've been studying oceanography in 6th grade this semester, so last week we went to a beach in Samana and studied the ocean coral. Who gets to do these kind of things. I've never snorkled before, but as I was staring at the beauty of the coral, I couldn't get that silly made up science teacher out of my head. We had an amazing trip.

We all learned tons, myself included. We also got to help our marine biologist do some reefcheck stuff. We would tape measure areas, then count the fish, coral, sea urchins, and red algae. So that next year they'll have a bench mark to see how the populations are changing. Apparantly when people started visiting this beach about 10 years ago, all of the fish got trapped and killed. Since they are the protectors of the coral, the red algae moved in and killed most of the coral. Last years trip saw nothing but algae. This year we saw nothing but sea urchins because they came in and ate all of the coral. So now the ground is clear for the coral to hopefully come back and thrive once again.

Anyway, they had an amazing experience. These kids have never ever gotten to camp before they came to this school. The maternal society is very evident when you have to live with the kids. Mothers baby their children so much, especially the boys, that I felt like a mother because they were so needy as far as building fire, cooking, sleeping, yada yada. All in all, successful trip.
Andrew