February 13th

Class was interesting today, least one of them was abnormal from its regular track of action. Ahem the obvious question; why?

Well seeing as how Creative Writing (Lexicology and Nursery Rhymes were their same ole selves) has the word "Writing" in its title, one would assume that the class would only involve written work. That assumption was wrong today, very wrong. Mama Duck is a very parental teacher as well as an out of the box kind of guy. He had us march over to the student center in order to utilize the small theater there.

That brought back a few flashbacks of high school. Every stage has the same dusty scent, this one was even black. I looked at the back of the theater and saw a small sound and light booth. It was a serious form of déjà vu for this former stage crewer.

Now, Mama Duck is a huge fan of ice breakers, it must have something to do with age. Honestly everybody under 30 hates those awkward games created to "bond" with new peers. They do nothing but verify the clicks that were already there. No matter, this class was a giant game of ice breakers; five to be exact.

First one (weirdest one and my least favorite) was a counting ice breaker. The idea was to count up to 15 without two people saying a number at the same time. The highest we ever reached was 10 (I believe) and it really had no point. I don't see how poor counting in a circle breaks the ice.

Second one (touchy and crowded) was where we had to move around the stage pantomiming different walks. For instance rushing with a heavy suitcase. The French kids seemed to love it but I wasn't too thrilled to be bumping shoulders with them (shiver). Also it didn't bond anything, failure!

Third one (strange but more logical) was writing out our names using our hands and the air. I was a part of the group who went first, lucky me. In any case the idea was that we "write" our names and the other students sitting in the audience have to guess what we've written. It is a creative name learning game, I'll give it that. However when someone doesn't guess your name (this happened to the girl who freaked out in Arthurian Lit last semester, uh yeah she's in this class too) it's awkward for everyone.

Fourth one (my favorite) was when we broke into even small groups of five and had to create a list of objects on top of a table. An example would be, "I put upon (direct translation) a cow on the table." Then the next person would say something like, "I put upon a tiger on a cow on the table." and so forth until you have a crazy list of nouns. I don't remember the entire list but I do remember my nouns; a bottle of wine, a marionette, and headphones. By the way, this was all in French. Jaimie and I volunteered to a part of one of the French groups. It worked well with this exercise since we really had to think about wacky nouns. There was some confusion about a "tournevis". We both asked what it was

but before the kids could explain Mama Duck swung by and said, "screwdriver." Alright then!

Fifth one (my most embarrassing) was telling a story based upon an assigned setting. My setting happened to a dessert. The concept was to describe an interesting story based upon your given location. Well I sucked that up majorly. I was attempting in French and the kids said, "maybe in English?" I told them no I needed to practice. Yeah, I was red faced while I stammered about trying to find water in a wasteland of sand. Good thing we only had to speak for

a minute, I was digging my own Arabian grave.

That was class. Told you that it was interesting and different from the norm. I liked certain parts of it but overall it didn't reflect creative writing. The story telling sorta did, but that was speech not writing. Michael really should change the class title to "Creative Expression" that would suit the vocal aspect. In any case Kate and I left and snacked on some burgers. It was a relief not to cook just to relax with a soda in hand.