Spirit Week?

This past week has been Spirit Week at the school. It kind of came on suddenly- evidently it was planned by one person for the past month and we were told just last week we all had to get involved with it. It is unfortunate, as it has virtually canceled my Theatre class, which was already way behind in preparing for the play. The Spirit Week is also set up to be highly competitive, and I'd prefer something a bit more collective and cooperative, helping people out together, Students of the World Unite, that kind of thing. But cela vie.

A strange Spirit Week, not having to do much with sports. But separately from it, we did have a football game recently, the 2nd (boys and girls) of the year, against our arch-rivals, CAS. This time our best result was a tie for the boys. I'm glad football season has finally begun. Nothing wrong with the basketball that goes on so much here. It's just not an indigenous species. I don't feel comfortable with invasive species coming into culture, no matter how well-intentioned the importers are. Especially if the imports come backed by a powerful country. I much prefer the excitement I see in the eyes of the man on the street from football. It reaches to their core much more deeply, more purely. Like in biology, so in anthropology: if we get one culture spread around everywhere, we get a lot of that culture, but we lose out on the richness of the diversity God intended for the world.

There have been some positive notes from this Spirit Week. (I explained to the students, who are not all aware of American culture, that this had nothing to do with being spiritual, or with spirits like jinn.) Crazy Hair Day was today- I wore algae. I figured there's enough of it in shampoo anyway. Tie and hat day I brought in about 12 hats to school, and every few minutes I'd change them, preferably when the students weren't looking while I was teaching. (Hey, wait a minute...) It was fun to see their reactions. I also got a tie for George, my skeleton. (Well, actually it's a lamprey we dissected, but I think highly appropriate for a skeleton.)

Today we had skits, where students impersonated teachers. A couple of them did me, doing my jokes. Turns out I need new jokes- all of the students can quote them from memory.

Mushroom walks into a bar. Bartender says, "We don't serve your kind here." Mushroom says, "Why not? I'm a fungi."

or

"Lampreys suck."

Hey, at least they remember it.