Around Town and To School

Key difference between Michigan and South Carolina: directions that roads run. In Michigan, direction-challenged people like me have a built-in safety feature: if I miss a road, I simply take the next one, do a bit of a loop, and end up where I wanted to go anyway. In South Carolina (and North Carolina, for that matter), roads are laid with no respect to compass, landmark, or settlement. Miss a turn? Pull into the next driveway immediately and turn back. Roads also rarely meet at right angles, and few keep their same names for more than a couple miles. Puts one in the mind of spaghetti thrown up on a piece of paper. "Oh, look, this big piece just happens to pass through that city. Hallelujah!"

Fortunately, just up the road from me (I will still refer to cardinal directions, thank you very much), north on the highway that runs by my apartment, is a complex with a McDonalds, a decent coffee shop with free wireless Internet, a restaurant called ThaiCoon, which makes me wonder if it's a racist way to say they serve Asian-soul fusion food, and the Publix grocery store.

Coming out of the grocery store, I always think there are these dark clouds in the eastern sky, but no, it's just Paris Mountain.


Thoughtful of them to put those radio towers right up there on top so we flat-landers would be able to recognize the mountain, no?

We took a trip up to my school, traveling what are labeled as state highways on the map, but remind me more of Copas Road fifteen years ago, but only the fun parts and lots of hills as well as curves. You know what I mean. At least the right ones of you do. Again with the name changes (I stay on the same road but it goes through five names in the twenty minutes I spend on it). Across a body of water they call a lake but is really a backed-up river, by some clay pits, and we arrive at school!


I am blocking out the name of my school on this site, even though a little digging could easily turn up where I work, just to be professional. I braved the giant Nemo in the window behind me for this well-framed shot by my mother.

After meeting with the administration, I got my course assignments, handbook with map (look, right angles do exist down here!), mascot tiger, and some of my textbooks and ancillary materials for first semester.



Then, my big moment, my classroom!




See that white thing bolted to the wall with the orange doo-hickey on the arm above it? It's called a Promethean Board. Those of you who are teachers may recognize its less-advanced cousin the SmartBoard. Not only does it project what is on the computer screen onto the boaed, it turns the board into a touch-sensitive device. That means to drag something across the screen, just drag it on the board with your finger. Want to write a note on the board? There's a special pen that writes on whatever is on the screen with digital ink, giving you the option of saving or printing exactly what the board looks like. And it's built tough for kids to use. Can you tell I'm excited? I'm the only new science teacher with one. Hooray for me!