Travelling the lonely Saskatchewan Highway

Day 4 of my 7 day tour of Saskatchewan schools. I'm having a great time and LEARNING a lot too. That's one of the greatest things about life I think, that we can learn ALL the TIME.


My lessons from this trip include:

• Never trust Mapquest. It's a great tool, but even great tools make mistakes (I went on a hour and half detour yesterday... too long a story for here).
• All Roads are not created Equal - On the map a road may look okay, but... yesterday I ended up spending an hour on a dirt road through the middle of nowhere trying to get to a school on time. It was pretty scary because the gravel was very loose and the back end of my little Aveo rental car was sliding all over the place.
• Sometimes our mistakes lead to great opportunities - I arrived at my 2nd school yesterday a half-hour late. I'm NEVER (Yesterday it happened twice - refer back to the mapquest comment) and I had to face people who had hired me to do a job and be at a certain place at a certain time and I failed. It felt horrible. But I fessed up, apologized, explained the situation (without trying to excuse it) and let them know I'd do whatever I could to rectify the problem. I ended up speaking to 20 very attentive middle and high school students in this tiny rural school in a very close, intimate setting and it was AMAZING! I felt more passionate about what I do in that moment than I had in a long time.
• Most people are kind and understanding human beings - The teacher at the school yesterday where I was late Mrs Jones was awesome! She could easily have been very upset and angry when I arrived late. She could have yelled at me, called me unprofessional and asked me to leave. She would have been justified. But she didn't. Instead, Ms Jones rouded up whatever kids could stay late and gathered them in the library to hear me speak. Of course I didn't charge her for the presentaiton because I failed to meet my end of the agreement but she insisted on paying me for my time because as she put it, "The kids who were hear won't forget this for a long time". What could have been a nasty situation, became a great memory that I'll carry with me for a long time. It was also a lesson.... when travelling in rural areas, don't count on good roads!

I Still Can't Believe I was that High in the Air!

It's been far too long since I made an entry on this blog so I thought I'd better update you on what's been happening with me.

One of the wonderful things about my job is that I get to take time off whenever I want. Since my wife is a teacher, summer time if often when I take my break too. This year we decided to take a trip with some of our best friends to the USofA.

We only had a six days to do as much as we could so we approached it full steam ahead.
First we hit Boston. I have a friend there so we stopped there for a night. We went to Quincy Market, Boston Common, and Harvard. The campus was beautiful at Harvard. The market had great food and was very interesting, and we had a good time people watching at the Common.

The next day it was on to NYC. We stayed with relatives in New Jersey but went into the city the next day. It was only my second time in NewYork and I was as amazed this time as I was last. It's such an incredible place! I would never want to live there (the traffic and crowds are too much for this Maritime man) but it's an awesome place to visit. Where else can you hop on a bus and see 20 places you've seen on TV your whole life in one day?

We took another day to go to Philadelsphia, the historic centre of the US. I'd never been there before but it was pretty interesting. We hit some major landmarks, saw the Liberty Bell and last but certainly not least, had a great Philly Cheese Steak sandwich.

On the last day before heading back, we went to Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ. It was AMAZING! So many rides so little time. I was never much for amuzement parks before, but this place was great. I got to ride the tallest and fastest roller coaster IN THE WORLD!!! 45 stories and 128 mph in less than a minute! The ride was called King da Ka and it just can't be described in words. I still can't Check out the experience for yourself http://www.sixflags.com/greatAdventure/rides/Kingdaka.aspx
It was out of character for me, but that's what vacation is all about right?!

So that's what's new with me. Pop me a post to let me know what you're doing with your vacation. I look forward to hearing your stories!