average photos of cool places: 06/01/12

Friday, 1 June 2012

New York: Day 13 - Visiting Sara's Classroom

Sara kindly invited Marc and I to see where she worked. As mentioned in a previous post, Sara teaches pre-kindergarteners (as in 3 year olds) and she thought it would be amusing to bring in some people with funny accents to confuse the small people.

Now most of you will be aware that I am not the biggest fan of the small ones. They are often loud, smell funny and covered in a thin layer (sometimes thick) of sticky. They are unpredictable (like moths) and erratic (like moths). But these ones were tolerable. I could even go as far as calling them cute.

Getting them settled for reading time.

Sara having to show Marc how to use the safety scissors

Sara making sure Marc isn't corrupting the little ones.

We entered the class and Sara introduced us to her 12 students. We were welcomed by those who could pull themselves away from whatever activity they were currently engrossed in. One young lad was happily playing in the dress up box and was perhaps the prettiest fairy princess I had ever seen.

One of the girls hugged me. It was awkward.

We then had reading time where Marc and I showed them pictures of koalas from one of the two koala books Sara has.

After we read it was lunch time where the kids were given a healthy lunch of chicken, beans, brown rice, milk or water and berries and cherries for dessert. I was a little disappointed that they weren't being fed processed chicken nuggets, pizza slices and chips (I feel like Jamie Oliver has either been lying to us or done an amazing job).

After lunch some of the kids got to go home and some of the others had free play time before their nap. Marc was a hit with the kids and showed some of the boys how to make masks. I sat there awkwardly.

Marc in his element, passing on his wisdom.

"Please don't touch me, I know you have cooties."

Nap time soon approached and we said our goodbyes before heading out to big peoples lunch.

Thank you Sara for inviting us along! It was a lot of fun and I'm glad to know if I ever have to force a small person out of me that there is somewhere I can send them!

New York: Day 11 & 12 - Central Park

So my travellers guilt is making me confess that we did nothing on day 11. We sat around in the apartment watching endless episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians (did anyone else see the episode where Kourtney, whilst giving birth, just ripped the baby out of her special place?) and 30 Rock ("You like Phil Collins?" "I have two ears and a heart don't I?" - classic Donaghy). We even had food delivered. I would like to blame the weather as it was raining and cold out but really, I was just being lazy and didn't feel like showering or putting on clothes that weren't made out of tracksuit material or flannel with floral prints or animal pictures on them.

Day 12 could have ended the same way as I was settling in to hermit mode quite well but we forced ourselves out the door and decided to have a vegetarian lunch at the upper east side eatery, Candle Cafe.

We then made our way to Central Park to have a good wander. We started at the Jackie O Reservoir and headed south around the Great Lawn, over to the Turtle Pond, past the Castle, through the Rambles and out to the Lake.