Read to Children

Children are great, There aren't many more satisfying ways to start your week, than to go to a local school and read to a bunch of kids.

Our Assignment was to read to children, but I had accidently ended up volunteering to teach, or at least attempt to teach a group of kids how to use homophones.

It was the most terrifying 28 minutes of my life. I have to do presentations all the time at school in front of several classes, but nothing has scared me more than 

The only thing is I didn't know what a homophone was. I crashed out of English class when I was sixteen and I have not looked back since that day, so to get to terms with a bunch of terms that I had not heard since Elementary school was fairly tough.

So I winged it, figured it out before they knew I was stumbling and having no idea what to talk to them out.

Children are so much more aware than adults, anything at all that interests them will be pointed out to you immediately. They have far less restraints than adults and tend to ask far more questions than you do. They are still young and everything is new to them, so to stop the curiosity of a child will seriously damage their development later on in life.

That morning I learnt how nervous and shifted I can be when I am not only asked to present something, but actually pushed to leave an impression and attempt to have someone learn from me.

Bring out the Safety Car

A 1/3 mile oval of asphalt.

More cars than the downtown expressway at 8:46am

The Foundation of Nascar

This is Short Track Racing at Southside Speedway, Richmond, VA

I have breathed in more carsogens to last me the next twenty years

I could potentially drunk enough beer to take out a field of yeast.

My ears were assaulted to hell.

At least me teeth didn't rattle out everytime the car rolled by.

we are going back again, If you didn't go, you should come, at least if it's just for 15 minutes of repetitive crashes

Shakespeare Fast Forward

This week in Virginia,

I journeyed for the first time to Charlottesville to see a play which basically condensed everything written by Shakespeare into about an hour and a half of performance.

This means there's a lot of improv.

This means there's a 40 second version of Macbeth

and a lot of ridicule of traditional theatre. Good.

The basic format of the play was written a few years ago, and I remember it being a bit hit.

Since then it has reproduced and performed all over the place.

The production I saw was staged by a drama/acting college in Charlottesville by students.

The cast consists of just 3 actors and minimal props. The stage is really just a backdrop, one armchair was used briefly.

If you ever hear of this being done anywhere near you, just go, it'll be worth it.

Return to the Promised Land

The return to Richmond was supposed to be an anti-climax, a return to the normal.

It felt more like a time warp had erupted on the side of my brain.

I drove down from D.C. on a Tuesday morning, after 3 months of being out of the country I was happy to discover that the I-95 was still riddled with roadworks and bad drivers.

I was also relieved to see that my car worked after baking on a friend's drive all summer.

Interstates are the same wherever you go, they are a stretch of slightly bent and cracked highway rhythmically thumping away under the tires. You hit a gas station followed by a bridge over a valley with no decent view and the occasional phantom traffic jam, followed by a gas station.

Richmond became familiar just before I hit it. There is a junction for another highway just outside the city that I know very well. It is just another junction like the other 20 that I passed through Spotsylvania (I love that name) & Fredicksburg. Except I know every bend. My Brain got very confused by suddenly transitioning from 100 miles of dull highway to dull highway that was as familiar as the road I grew up on.

I went into autopilot and descended on the city that has only been changed by the roasting southern sun. Nothing was different.

Within 60 seconds of getting out of the car, someone from school drove by waving.