So long, farewell...

Brother Ben beat finals, mono, a car wreck and worried family members and is making it to the airport to go to the Galapagos Islands. The brainy brother will conduct research for five weeks! Secretly I'm hoping to score a pet turtle out of the whole excursion, but I think stealing endangered species is "frowned upon" boo...come on Tea party, get on your big government and let Ben bring home a turtle! We will all miss the little brother but can't wait to see pictures and hear the tales of this awesome trip. I know he is going to the populated island for the majority of his stay but I still imagine him Tom Hanks, Cast Away style, in a hut, sweating all the time, using his sun dial to tell time, and blowing into a shell to alert others of some dangerous prehistoric animal he will discover.

In other news, my fabulous uncle Ray gets in town tonight. We are meeting at his hotel and going to happy hour and dinner. Cannot wait to see the man that taught me everything I need to know in life from "The Sound of Music". I predict some dancing! For Natalie's News this has been, Natalie-Corinne.

perhaps I had a wicked childhood

If you hold the beautiful musical "Sound of Music" in the same sacred category as my family does you will most definitely know that the title is in fact from that most glorious work. There really is no other film that can possibly stand next to that wondrous masterpiece. I have wanted to show it to my students but I was afraid because I love it so much I was concerned they would not and it would give me a bad memory of the best movie of all time. But I decided that we all needed some extra Julie in our lives so I have began teaching it anyway. The students I teach have SO many comments that are hilarious so I thought I would share some of them with you. For the readers who do not live and breathe SOM (sound of music, duh) this post will seem ridiculously dorky and probably useless. Deal.

1. During the song "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" kids had many suggestions. One student yelled out, "beat her" another yelled "kick her out", but my favorite comment from that song was when the nuns says she is late for everything except for every meal one girl said, "oh Maria, me too. I'm always hungry".

2. During the part when Maria meets the children for the first time the youngest son Kurt says that he wants to be treated like a boy and one of my students said, "well nobody is going to treat you like a boy when you're wearing those daisy dukes". Priceless.

3. All the girls love the part when Liesl and Rolfe sneak out in the gazebo. First at least one person in every class says something to the effect of "she knows her daddy is going to find her and whoop her" or "she knows better to sneak off with some boy.." etc. Then I told a couple of classes the story about the elderly woman who was jumping in the gazebo and fell and broke her hip so they closed the gazebo and they roared with laughter. "That old woman knows she too old to be jumping in a gazebo.. "etc.

4. Of course this movie is one of the cleanest movies ever but junior high kids will cling on to ANYTHING and make it gross or uncomfortable. For example, when Liesl and Rolfe and dancing, Rolfe twirls Liesl and her legs are shown and in every class boys get all flipped out. "Ooh, twirl her again "etc. Also, a lot of the girls think Captain Von Trapp is cute (and they are correct) but one brave soul asks me yesterday" Miss, you think Captain Von Trapp sexy?" I know she just wanted to see my reaction to her saying the big bad s word. Lastly, when Liesl asks if she can drink champagne ALL the students ask, "Miss, you drink champagne? You drink liquor?" etc etc. I did not think this movie would bring up such uncomfortable topics!

But for the most part, it is going well. I think most of the students like it, a couple had the nerve to call Maria ugly and I quickly squashed their souls. Well I need to get back to work, for Natalie's News this has been, Natalie-Corinne.