The middle school field trip. I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed. We took the entire 6th grade, 400 students, to the Chihuly Glass museum and the Imax theater. I signed up to help because A. I wanted to see the Chihuly museum, B. This is my week off work, so I was actually able to donate an entire Thursday, and C. I am completely not involved with the middle school and thought I would make a few small steps in that direction. Plus, Rose really wanted me to go.

It was pretty well organized. All the kids got marked getting on and off the buses, a great relief to me. Each parent chaperone had 10 kids we were responsible for. My group was #13. I never learned their names, but they all had 13 tags on and periodically I would wave my number, assemble them and recount. And, we all know I have no sense of direction, but there were so many of us that I could just follow another group to our next destination.

The kids were great. They did not do anything stupid like touch the glass or wander away. Nor did they beat each other up or roll their eyes at each other. They made it easy for me to keep track of them even in the hoards.

I liked the Chihuly though I'm sure I would have liked it more in a contemplative atmosphere. Still, the glass work and the way it is displayed is stunning. I did not particularly like the Imax movie. It was a 3D view of the destruction of the coral reefs in Papua New Guinea. Depressing and 3D gives me a head-ache.

Rose didn't have any friends in her group, so she and I hung out which was nice. I let her use my phone like all the other kids who were taking pictures with their phones, and that made her very happy.

But all in all, I did not enjoy the experience. It was often very loud, and though it did turn out to be organized well, I often didn't trust it would all work out. We got there 45 minutes off schedule. So, our time in the museum was cut in half. The kids' buses showed up to take them back to school, but the adult volunteer bus was fifteen minutes late, seriously eating into my naptime. And we spent a lot of time waiting in lines.