Snow Day!

Namaste!

There is quite nothing like having a snow day in the middle of the week (especially a week where Friday is already a day reserved for Professional Development).  With one day of teaching left in the week, I can relax tonight.

A decent size snow storm hit us during the night, plows came in, snow shovelers came by and not much is left in the way of being "snowed in".   Needless to say, Angela and I spent the day inside with Dharma.   While Ange was clearing off our cars (she volunteered!)  I decided to whip up some home fries so we could have a nice relaxing breakfast.  Add a couple eggs, a couple slices of toast and it was a delicious meal!

We finally got a chance to watch Inception (which came in the mail about a month ago!) which turned out to be an awesome movie!  (Ange is unsure if she liked it or not...)  After seeing South Park's hilarious spoof on the concept of 'Dreams within Dreams', I knew that I had to see it and I was not disappointed.  What could have just been a strange trippy Sci-Fi movie (ahem, Matrix) turned out to contain a strong storyline, a great background and heart-racing action to the end.

In addition to a movie, I was also able to finish two books!  The first was Heroes of the Valley which was lent to me by a fellow teacher (who also shares a love for Young Adult Fiction).  The plot of this book involved Twelve Viking/Norse families who were the descendants of great heroes and the events that occur when two of these families get into a conflict that fractured the laws that these ancient heroes set down many years before.  I definitely recommend this book as it was quite a page-turner even though I was hoping to see references to Norse gods, but there were none (which made me sorta sad but I still enjoyed the book).

The second, a shorter book, called Siddhartha (How strange is it that at the time of posting the cost is $6.66...wow!) by Herman Hesse (who I happen to have read a lot of his book).  Just as this title suggest, it follows the path of a brahmin's (Hindu High Priest) son as he leaves his family to follow a path to Enlightenment.  Along the way, he meets the first Buddha, finds himself to be a cheating merchant, becomes a heavy gambler, fathers a son but eventually he able to achieve the goal that he set out for himself.  I also heavily recommend this book.  It is heavily laden in the abstract ideas of existence and the pursuit of enlightenment, but it's not a hard read.

Buddhism is a topic that gets brought up many times throughout the year as I teach and I find that the students are always so interested in the ideas of the religion.  For those of you who don't know, Buddha's teachings are based first and foremost on the idea that Suffering is EVERYWHERE.  (Seems like a pretty awful way to start a religion but I encourage you to look up more about Buddhism and find out what Buddha was saying about a human's existence!)

Going to finish drinking some tea, play with Dharma a little bit and then maybe start on my next read: Hayy Ibn Yaqzan.