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camping and more
2004-10-20 - 3:40 p.m. I have to say I am completely exhausted. Maddy's off in the hills above Santa Cruz at some kind of camping trip with naturalists. I'm sure it will be really fun, and a good thing, and bring the kids together -- Which will be a good thing, because just from my brief interaction with them I can see that they are split into three groups -- the kinds who went to elementary school at Middle School B, the new kids (came in in 7th or 6th grade) and the new kids who came in through a program that takes promising kids out of the terrible local public school system and sends them off to private schools. I know that the recieved wisdom is that this is a terrible thing, and the foundation shoudl really be devoting their energies to helping the public schools. I think they actually do that to some extent -- they have some fabulous afterschool program. I also think, to hell with that. The local school system really does seem to be more unimaginiative than most, plagued with no money, a lot of poor kids, kids with parents who either can't or don't know how to help them succeed in school, and then a hideous bureauocracy and a tyrannical superintendant. These are the sort of fragile kids who actually do really well in a good school, and might really sink in a bad school. So hopefully, this trip will mix them all up a bit. It's not that the other kids don't want to hang out with the foundation kids, i should stress. It's that those kids already know each other really well from their afterschool program and so tend to hang out together. Much like the Middle School B lifers, and, for that matter, Maddy, Zoe and Morgan, who all went to elementary school together. Anyway. I think the result generally is that they DO get mixed up, and that's a good thing. Anyway -- so I drove to Santa Cruz and back this morning, then came in and have been busy here ever since, and haven't really had a proper lunch, and would like to go home. In fact, I think I might. I have to stop at the library and I have some knitting to do --- Yawn. And it feels like it's getting dark. I woke up at three last night when it rained, and then at 3:20, when it had stopped. It is feeling very cozy at night to be warm in my bed in the dark. Maddy sadly decided not to take a stuffed animal with her on the trip -- although she really does sleep with an animal (different ones) every night. I think she thought that people might laugh at her. But I noticed that Daniel, a boy in my car, had brought some kind of stuffed tiger with him -- I think she was kind of resigned to the fact that, eventually, every child has to go to camp at least one, and okay, she was going, but she wasn't expecting it to be much fun. Funny, huh. Okay -- Bye.
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