After a drizzly, cloudy day yesterday, I woke up today to nothing but sun and a light breeze. I met up with Leeanne for a run to the Berg River Dam - about 5 km away from the school. We'd never tried the run before so it was a nice little running adventure. The whole run was beautiful! The road was empty and wound through fields of grasses and wildflowers. When I got closer to the dam, I was overcome by flash of brilliance (actually, it wasn't exactly a flash. I should have figured this out a while ago). I've been talking about energy resources to my grade 8 natural science class, and tomorrow's planned lesson... hydroelectric power! And, because I'm here, I can pile my students into the van and drive them up to the dam to learn instead of talking about it in class. I love this!
The rest of my run turned into a running reconnaissance mission to check out how my plan would go down. When I got to the top to check out the reservoir, an older couple pulled up on a motorbike. The man proceeded to walk around, explaining to the woman how the dam had been built, how the turbines and the spillways worked, why the dam had been built... everything! I creeped their whole conversation to gain precious teaching ammo for our impromptu field trip tomorrow. On their way back to their bikes, I admitted to them that I had been snooping their conversation and why. We got into a great conversation. The man worked for the company that had built the dam and was more than happy to explain some of the more technical details. He had also spent a significant amount of time in Cairo while he was working in Khartoum in Sudan, AND he had spent a lot of time up in Santa Cruz surfing in his younger years. Small world. Yet another example of why talking to strangers can make life a little more interesting.
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