Seaweed and Crazy Students

In marine science we are currently learning about algae - which is just about the most boring thing ever, especially since some of my students have trouble with English, and my projector had been commandeered by the Red Cross. Thankfully today everything got more fun. It order to make algae seem slightly more intersting and since I had my projector back today I made a slide show of pictures about algae and how people use it. After the slide show we watched a quick video about algae as biofuel, and then I brought out the coup de grace - a container of seaweed.

I thought it would just be mildly interesting to them as they live around the ocean and eat from the ocean all the time. However the student freaked out about eating the seaweed, and although most of the tried their reactions were hilarious. The faces some of the made were classic, not to mention a certain boy in my class jokingly threatens to sue me because apparently I was trying to poison him. Classes like these make me love my students...

Some days there are moments that make me realize I am in a different culture. For example today at lunch I was sitting in my room working on a PowerPoint presentation for my class when some boys came in and asked if they could use the outlets in my classroom. This might seem unsual, but it is an everyday occurance for me because the kids love to charge their phones and mp3 players at lunch and before school, and as I have outlets at all the lab tables they stop by  often. Not to mention that some of the students don't have houses, so they need to charge things at school.

I was still working away listening to some music, when I noticed a few minutes later a strange buzzing noise in the background. I turned off my music and immediately knew what the noise was and stormed to the other side of the room where the boys were circled. In the center was a boy with his arm out on a stool, and another boy whom I know with a homemade tattoo gun in hand, ready to ink up the other boy's arm.

That may sound crazy, but the best part is that the day before I had found two girls in the stairway after lunch washing one of the girl's legs with soap above the knee where she had obviously just had a six inch tattoo of the word "diva" made in blue ballpoint pen ink. I kid you not, these kids jerry-rig tattoo guns from an old power adapter, a small motor, the shaft of a ballpoint pen and a needle, then break pens open and use the ink to tattoo each other. How insane is that?

Strangely enough my new thoughts of the matter is that next time I catch them I'm going to take a picture so you can see just how weird the situation is.