Thankfully, no one was physically hurt. But I was the only adult in the room when it happened, and I felt fairly powerless to do anything about it because the students would not stop no matter how much I yelled at them (and I have never yelled at a student before but I. Was. Yelling.). And it was a really scary moment for me. I’m still pretty shaken up about it, to be perfectly honest.
Bioluminescent Bay Vieques, Puerto Rico
This unique bay contains up to 720,000 single-celled bioluminescent dinoflagellates per gallon of water. These half-plant, half-animal organisms emit a flash of bluish light when agitated at night. The high concentration of these creatures (Pyrodimium bahamense) can create enough light to read a book
One of the many Beautiful Things from my unique Island ;)
I visited this bio bay and it was amazing! Glad I’m able to show my followers, because a regular camera can’t really take pictures of it.
(via les-enfants-terrible)
So I finished my most recent read, Life of Pi by Yann Martel. (Actually, I finished it over the weekend, but in case you haven’t noticed I haven’t been posting much lately. I may or may not have been threatened to make this post).
Before I get into talking about the book itself, I feel obligated to share the story of why I read this book. It is a very popular, very acclaimed novel. It has been on my to-read list for many years, but that particular list is nearly infinite and ever growing longer, and Pi was just never particularly high up on it. So he was constantly cast aside. Last weekend, however, as I was quickly packing to leave for the beach I realized I had a problem: my nook was frozen. If anyone else owns a nook and has had this problem before as I have then you know unfreezing a nook is no simple task. It is doable but is a pain in the ass and cannot be done in just a few minutes. I was running out the door. I couldn’t go to the beach without a book, but to save space I had only brought my e-reader with me. So I quickly checked in a cabinet in the house where I knew there were some books laying around. Life of Pi was there. I grabbed it on impulsive and for lack of any better options.
This story is important because this is why I don’t want real books to ever be completely replaced by e-readers, as inevitable as that probably is. E-readers are great. I love mine. But these sort of accidental, impulsive reads don’t happen through an e-reader. This is how myself and so many other people I know have found some of our favorite books. And I would be missing out tremendously if I were to never pick up Life of Pi.
Those who know my reading habits know that, for me, characters make or break a story above any other factor. As you may or may not already know, this novel is the story of a boy who is shipwrecked and spends 227 days floating in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat which he is sharing with a Bengal Tiger. There are maybe 100 pages of build up and the rest of the story takes place on that tiny lifeboat. There is plot, certainly, but this is not what you would call an action-packed novel. But the plot of this novel could have consisted of Pi sitting in an empty room watching paint dry for 400 pages, and I probably would still have loved it because he is such a compelling character. He is just enough parts humor, spirituality, intelligence, and fallibility. He is well-developed and real.
The novel has a beautiful narrative voice, Pi being the first-person narrator of his own story, with rare and brief interludes of third person. I loved the language of this book so much that it took me all of one paragraph to be hooked, and I usually take a fairly long time to completely fall into a story. I want this character’s perspective on everything. I want Pi to narrate my life.
Everyone here is cooking one dish to have at the party. I’m making barbecue chicken nachos! Should be interesting, because conveniently everyone here is either a Pats fan or a Giants fan.
We saw The Woman in Black and pretty much crapped ourselves together lol. It was really good though!! The theater was so loud…which is apparently par for the course around here haha. Also pretty much saw the entire 8th Grade class of TASIS. They pretended not to see us, unsurprisingly.
Last night there was a Bruins game on and I FORGOT. SOB I’M SORRY BOYS.
jo-march asked: Omg, Mary. So I was walking to commons today and I hear these two guys talking. And they're talking about like working on their abs and I'm like yeahhh, you go to rwu frat boy. BUT THEN. They started talking about pokeballs and this game they were playing, and I almost kidnapped him, because clearly he is your soul mate and he needs to wait right there until you come back to America.
Omg. Yes! Please find him again and lock him in a room for me for safekeeping until I get back!
There was a question about how DVDs have supplanted (that would be the vocab word lol) VHS tapes. A kid raised his hand to ask a question. “What’s a VHS tape?” Wehhhhh I feel so oooooooooold.
Another kid, when asked to write a sentence displaying he knew the meaning of the word modify, writes: I modified my rock so it could fly me to another time period.
To be fair, I could tell he knew what modify meant.
Afterword we were discussing some poetry, and the same kid who turned his rock into a time machine raises his hand to answer a question. I call on him and he says “the magic voices inside my head are telling me I have to pass gas.” Thank you for that meaningful contribution to class.
latinageek asked: If you were thinking about adopting a stray/abandoned dog from PR, check out 'Save A Sato Foundation' (google them; Tumblr doesn't allow links in questions). OR you can participate in their program where you accompany an animal on your flight back to the U.S. to be adopted over there by someone else. It's a great way to help with the sato problem in PR since you seem concerned.
Ah, thank you so much! I am looking into their site now. I would unquestionably adopt a dog while I was here if I could—unfortunately I already have a dog at home who I love to death, but she is not always dog-friendly; it would be hard to know for sure if it would be okay for us to take one of the dogs in without her being able to meet it first and see how it goes. I’m going to see what I can do to support them, though :). Thanks again!
Anonymous asked: OMG Mary looks like you had a faboulos weekend. You know me i love all the animals and the horses. I was just talking to your mom telling her i was only bringing down a bathing suit and was saving the room in my suit case to bring back some dogs.You know they will all have names by the time we leave. I think if i put Pasquale aroung my neck he might pass for a fur collar. What you think? See you in February. So excited. Save me one of those great looking drinks. Enjoy your time. LUV YOU A. Dawn
I’m so excited for you to come too!! Idk about the scarf idea though…I think he might move around too much lol we’ll have to come up with a way to explain that away :).
