Field Trip for the Kiddies!

I may have been out of Canada for a little while but you can’t show me a large metal hill with inner tubes and tell me it’s a sleigh ride. Potato sack slide at best.
Anyway this morning the kids were taken on their field trip to the Bexco Sleigh ride. The artificial snow I was promised there failed to materialize, or more aptly had previously materialized and gone the way of Frosty in the green house days ago. With no real points of reference for what a sledding actually entails the kids were still thrilled. There was a bit more friction going down the slopes so the inner tubes didn’t reach breakneck speed. But that also had the benefit that not one of the kids experienced the Canadian tradition of completing the second half of the downhill trip on your face after your tire flips. They had about two hours to go up and down the various slopes on the hill (maybe four stories at the top with gentle slopes- you’ll have to use the mental paintbox god gave you until I get new batteries for my camera). Now these kids were bundled up for a snowy ride, which was in sharp contrast to the bright kinda warm day that we had.

Now kids being kids and the tubes they had to drag up the hill being equal in mass and willpower to them they very soon got tired. I spent a good deal of time dragging sleds up the hill. As in the second hour and a half. Korean kids need to spend more time outside and less time in school, even without the bittersweet kiss of frostbite they were all tobogganed out fairly quickly. Unless I dragged their sleds, and sometime the kids themselves, up to the top. Then they had energy and enthusiasm. To be fair I was more than happy when break time was called, running up and down the hill dragging kids and sleds is fun but tiring.

They had a snack break, during which I noticed that not a single kid had a single piece of fruit or bottle of water. Cookies, chips, candies and juice (I don’t hate juice for active kids, but I’m on a nutrition tirade so it gets swept in there too) and plenty of those. Now in retrospect it was a field trip and the parents don’t normally pack snacks for the kids, so it may have been a treat mentality. But in my mindset if you’ve got a kid that can’t run up and down a toboggan hill for two hours you might not want to give him a box of cookies for a snack.

By round two I was getting tired, but the kids were exhausted. They were all really thankful for my help, some of our school’s bus drivers were helping them up the hills too. I can’t remember the last time I sweated through a t shirt and jeans in February.

I did have a lot of fun, and it took up half a day of work- but the downside is that it has rendered me too tired to doll this blog up like the high class call girl it deserves to be, you’ll have to settle for ‘homely friend with a good heart’. I’m going to to to sleep and pretend I’m not going to be sore tomorrow.