GESS Day

Today I joined Carroll and a whole bunch of girls and Guiders from all over Sutherland Shire and down the southern coast for a day of science and engineering activities at Wollongong University, called Guides in Engineering and Science Saturday (GESS). It was funny - I'd met (or re-met, for the girls from Ruth and Carroll's unit) a number of these girls at the Bindaree Regatta last weekend and told them that I was flying home to Canada. So they were pretty surprised to see me again! I got to explain the joys of standby travel over and over and over. :-)

My job for the day was basically to ride herd, and help ensure that the girls were where they were supposed to be. I shadowed one of the groups as they circulated through the activities, and snapped some great pictures. Basically Guiding (i.e. Carroll) was responsible for doing all the admin for the day, and the university's profs and grad students put together the activities.

The girls got to try out four different activities. First my group played around with electricity and magnetism. The Van Der Graaf generator was a big hit - there's no Science Centre here for the girls to go to, so I don't think they'd ever seen one before. I got some great pictures of kids with their hair standing on end! Then we trooped over to another building and made solar-powered fans, which the girls loved. In the afternoon, we attended a session on wind turbines (which wasn't the greatest, to put it mildly, but the girls survived), and then we ended the afternoon with the Great Egg Drop. As a science teacher I learned a few new tricks to take back to my class. So all in all a pretty good day!

Ruth and I ended up back at Carroll's for tea after the girls had all gone home, and while the two of them were searching for something on the computer (Ruth's got a big assignment for her PhD courses due this week), I amused myself by watching the antics of the kookaburras who seem to like Carroll's backyard. They really are big birds! They eat snakes and worms and other slimy things, and this great big kookaburra spent a lot of time surveying the backyard from a perch on the clothesline - much to the dismay of the other backyard birds, who didn't seem to want it there.

When Ruth and I got home, Bill had already cooked us dinner, which was great! I ate too much. Way too much. Then we had dessert. I ate too much dessert. Groan. I've spent most of the evening with a very full and somewhat unhappy belly. Ah well. Life's rough. :-)

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I was hoping to at least be in the same COUNTRY as my Mom, so that when I called her, the time difference wouldn't be so crazy. Of course that's not the case, so Mom's gonna have to put up with me calling her whenever I can. I am looking forward to my second attempt at flying home on Monday...