Extracurricular

I've been telling you about school and what's it's like to be here in Des Moines. Let me tell you a little bit about last Friday night. It started off with a seven course meal made by one of the students. A seven course meal is kind of like a "final" in cooking. I'm still only cooking one course meals. The student who cooked the meal made tomato basil soup and breadsticks, along with fettucini alfredo, stir-fry vegetables, jello salad, a slushy drink, and a three layer cake. The soup was excellent, the fettucini was very tasty, and the cake was delicious. When the students eat the seven course meal, they have to eat with their shades on, even after school hours. That is the hardest thing I've done so far--eat with my shades on. I had only one mishap during the meal. Trying to pick up the cake I tipped over the pitcher of slush and it spilled on my lap and on the floor, but luckily there was only a little bit of the slush left in the pitcher.

After letting the meal set for awhile in my stomach, I had to work out. I ran on the treadmill, did a little bit of the EFX machine, and finished on the air dyne, the Antichrist of exercise machines. I was saturated with sweat, so I decided to go to the roof to cool off a bit. I took my tunes with me and was listening to them when a couple more students came up to the roof, too.

Soon there were six of us on the roof. We'd listen to the music, tell funny stories, and sometimes we would just sit and stare at the city lights. One student saw only darkness with his eyes, but I believed he grasped the mood of the city that night more than most. It was a little surreal with the night lights of Des Moines shining below and us on top of the building looking out.

At last we left the roof. A bunch of us congregated on the front steps at street level, when I finally went in to shower off. During my shower I started hearing some booms in the distance and knew somewhere close fireworks were being shot off. By the time I got to my window and looked out, the fireworks were finished. I learned later that the group on the steps had gone into the building about five minutes before the fireworks began, and they missed them, too. I thought that was funny. More later.