There are fireflies in Iowa?

The rest of yesterday was a blast. I picked my students up from class, went to lunch, then took them back. While they were in class, we got a phone call that "Kil'n Time" was all ready for us at 4:30 pm. My boss was a little confused because she thought we were going to Kil'n Time today instead of yesterday! So we had to change our plans and run over and get 3 15-passenger vans and another mini van in time to pick up the students after class and get them to Kil'n Time on time.

Christy putting on her paint for the "drip"

After we picked everyone up, we let them quickly drop their things off at Martin Hall, then drove to Main Street where Kil'n Time is. Now you're probably thinking, what the heck is Kil'n Time?! Kil'n Time is a small place on Main Street where there is pre-made pottery that you can paint. You have to purchase the pottery, and pay a small fee to use their supplies and then you can sit down and paint the pottery before they fire and glaze it. Once it's fired and glazed a few days later, you can take it home with you. It makes a great gift! They have a wide variety of sculptures, plates, mugs, vases, etc, but we just had all of our students paint tiles. All of the students could use 1 of 3 painting techniques. Drip, Tie-dye, or Splatter. Most of the students at my table chose drip, including myself. We all had a lot of fun painting our tiles, but when it came time for the "drip" part, Juno had a little trouble. We were supposed to shake our tile up and down after we squirted some paint down the middle, but we were supposed to shake it in a certain direction. Well, Juno shook his in the opposite direction that we was "supposed" to so it didn't turn out how the owner wanted it to, but it turned out to be my favorite one just for that reason. After he realized what he did, no one could stop laughing, even Juno. He was such a good sport about it and I told him, "well now when you see this tile, you'll look back and remember this and how much fun you had making it!"

Juno shaking his the "wrong way"

My tile

Playing cards under the Campanile on Central Campus

After Kil'n Time, we went back to eat dinner, and then the students had "study hour." Then we had one more "activity time." During this time, we all decided to go to central campus where we split up into different groups. We had a group of ultimate frisbee, soccer, catch phrase, and cards. I was in charge of the students that wanted to play cards. So we all went and sat in a big circle under the campanile and played a few games of BS and Queens. Juno let everyone use his deck of cards, but didn't want to play. After a while, I quit playing too and just watched and took a few pictures. As Juno and I were standing there, he saw a lightning bug and immediately said, "you have fireflies here?!" At first I thought he was joking, and just said, "yeah..." but then remembered that he was from Nevada. I don't think I had ever seen a high-schooler so excited about fireflies before.

As we were walking back to Martin, Juno was still talking about how cool the fireflies were, and then everyone started talking about them and how they used to catch them when they were younger. Then I told them that when my mom was a kid, she and her friends would go out and pull their little lights off and stick them on their fingers as rings. When Juno and the other boys around me heard this, they were all shocked and started talking about animal cruelty and everything! You would think that if my mom and her friends did it when they were kids, high school boys would have done something similar, but no. I also told Juno that it's funny when you hit them when you're driving at night and the lights stick on the windshield and stay lit up for a while until they completely die out. He thought that was hilarious! Later last night, I had to call my mom and tell her the story and how all of my kids think she's "cruel." Her response: "everyone did it when I was a kid, it wasn't just me!"

Isn't Juno an awesome name? Everyone in my group has a nickname except for Juno because no one wants to call him anything else since it's already "cool." My nickname is "Shea Butter", Tyler goes by "Hupp", Ethan goes by "Ehtan" because apparently I am dyslexic and spelled his name on his name tag like that, and Keegan wants to be called "Troy" (I have no idea why.)

Looking forward to what today will bring!