Victoria Day long weekend is here.

So is some fantastic weather too.

Very summer for the long weekend.

Flowers and vegetables will get planted.

Maybe read my book a little.

And celebrate Hubby’s birthday on Monday.

Join me?

 

If you actually know me, or know where I live, you will know that I don’t in fact live in an area that is under military rule.  I cannot even imagine what that would be like but last week I got an idea of what it could be like. The Canadian military was doing training exercises in my area.  Imagine 2000 personnel and 600 military vehicles, including rubber tire tanks.  It was a little surreal. They started moving into the area on the weekend and then were training last Monday through Wednesday. Actually, there were some in the area the previous Friday and they stopped in at a local school so the kids could have a look at and climb inside their tank.  Pretty cool opportunity.  Over the weekend we had military jeeps, trucks and tanks roaring up and down the road as they moved in.

Come Monday morning I encountered jeeps and trucks on my route to school.  One of the training areas was right near my house.  I don’t know exactly how many were surround my area in particular but they were here. There was

red flagging set up along the highway to indicate that there was training going on roadside.  As a matter of fact, one day on my drive home there was a soldier sitting on a stool, on the side of the highway, armed! Was there ammo in his gun?  I have no idea, but he was sitting there with his guy at the ready. Just after him, at the off ramp, there was a tank, with several military members roadside.  I cannot tell you how many troops may have been in the specific area because it is a forested area and in camouflage fatigues there would have been hard to see. Part of what the military was doing was ferrying vehicles across a local lake.  I would have liked to have seen this but it done while I was at work.

The troops were not in the area for long and I never did see anywhere near the 2000 members, but it really did get my thinking about what it would be like to live somewhere that is under military rule or where our troops are on daily guard.  Knowing that this was definitely friendly certainly helped the matter. But thinking about troops being constantly on surveillance would be a little disconcerting, to say the least.

And there are still teachers who struggle with the idea of technology in the classroom.

I started clearing out my room

My classroom that, I should say.

I am the librarian next year.

I’m looking forward to the change

But have tons to move out!

Storing it will be rather interesting!

I hope you’ll join in this week…

The weeks are feeling much longer.

The kids are ready for summer.

And if I were to admit…

So am I, but can’t yet.

The weather is getting better here.

So that is definitely helping out!

How on earth are we already into May?  The way the weather has been this just seem possible.  The way the weather has been I really should have read more.  I missing reading a forth book by one day – just couldn’t/didn’t get it done.

So here they are…

April

  

Bringing Up Bebe - Pamela Druckerman

My main reason for reading this book was to see what the author had to say about raising children in France compared to North America.  In all honesty the book was hit and miss for me.  It was definitely an interesting read, but there were some aspects of it that just were that appealing.  Each time Ms. Druckerman mentioned a friend, be they French or American, she gave a sentence or so describing their family (number of children, spouse background) regardless of the fact that we may have already heard about this person, and their thoughts, in a previous chapter.  This really did start to grate on me by the end of the book.

Overall I did find the book rather fascinating.  There are so many aspect of rearing a child in France that I found to be VERY appealing.  The country sponsored child care for one!  I cannot even imagine how much help that is for families.  I was also very intrigued with education there compared to here.  Perhaps the one point that I liked the most was regarding the giving of praise to students in France, or lack of praise as the case is.  In North America we tend to cushion the blow by telling students what they did well, even if the entire piece of work really didn’t meet standards.  In France, they “gently delve into what went wrong, giving kids the confidence and tools to improve.” I really like this ideal.  It completely flies in the face of the whole, everyone should get a trophy because they participated mantra that we seem to have going on in North America right now.  This really isn’t helping anyone, and really doesn’t help the child.  The book was a good read and made me think about the way I interact with the students in my class and made me think a little deeper as to how those children were raised and why they may act the way they do.  There is a lot of buzz about this book right now.  It’s definitely an interesting read, but not the greatest read of the year so far.

Divergent - Veronica Roth

If you have read the Hunger Games then you will be very familiar with this type of story.  Much like the Hunger Games, Divergent revolves around the main character Tris (Beatrice) and the dystopian society in which she lives.  At the age of 16 Tris must choose one of the five factions – Dauntless, Abnegation, Erudite, Amity and Candor. In a world that lives by the mantra “faction over family,” upon choosing many never see there family again, if they choose to defect to another faction.  Tris chooses Dauntless and the training begins.  For those of you who may have found the hunger games to be violent, be warned, this book is more violent in every way. It was also difficult to read because there is a suicide (generally a difficult  topic to read, but made even more so because I was dealing with this in read life too). Suicide and violence aside I loved the book.  Not a fast reader, I finished it in just over a week and in the closing pages had to force myself to put the book down each night otherwise I would have read until I was finished.  The twists and turns throughout where well written and worked very well.  Roth does a fabulous job of putting little tidbits throughout the book to make connections to the main character – for example, near the end of the book Tris realizes she is most definitely not alone in her divergence (the Dauntless guard is a great example). Much like heading into Chasing Fire, I cannot imagine what Veronica Roth has in store for the second book in this series – Insurgent – especially given everything that happened at this end of Divergent! I most definitely suggest this book it was fabulous!

Empty - Suzanne Weyn

The storyline of this book was a pretty good one – what would it be like if we ran out of oil.  The fact that there was no specific date attached to the book, “ten years in the future” was a smart move on the author/editors part because it doesn’t date the book where you can say, “hey that just didn’t happen then!” Overall I did like the story but my biggest critique is that I wanted more.  The story jumped around a bunch in an effort to move the story along but in actuality it just left me wanting more, much more to the story. The one thing that drove me NUTS was Oscpearl!  The colliding of two hurricanes to create a super hurricane named Oscpearl.  First, the name drove me nuts, then it just starting bugging me because it was said over and over and over again.

The story certainly makes you think about what would happen if we do run out of oil – personally I can’t imagine going through what the characters experienced. Not only running out of oil, but having the electricity out, prices sky rocketing because of delivery costs and then simply running out of food and supplies.

The “green” house in the story does sound pretty awesome.  And in all honestly living off the electricity grid would be awesome!

It’s worth the read and since it is a YA book I would recommend it as such.  I think it would make that age group think a little about what if this is their future – but it won’t make them think too hard.

Joining in…

I have a busy weekend planned.

Saturday starts in the big city…

then a jump across the border…

for a little bit of shopping.

Sunday is a book buying day…

for my school library. Very busy!