Wed. July 2

I took more photos of Marley,the seal today. He is really looking healthy. He maneuvers along on the grass amazingly fast. Here are some photos. I'm sure Delia and Emmie will like these:






















In the afternoon, we went to the little school here...Urafirth Primary School. They had asked Sara and I to come and make a presentation about bees. Luckily, I had some photos of our hive and our bees so Sara made a power point presentation with them and a few other photos of bees that she rounded up. The kids were very excited about bees and asked great questions. They were also curious about Nebraska and asked questions about that too. The teacher, Wilma, found a video with music about the waggle dance. The waggle dance is a dance that bees do to tell the other bees in the hive where the good food source is for the day...the waggle their rear end and point in the direction of the nectar. Their vibrations indicate how far away it is also. Anyway, Wilma showed the animated version (cartoon style) of the waggle dance and all the kids started shaking their tail feathers! They had a blast!

Here's a link to what actual bees do:

http://youtu.be/bFDGPgXtK-U

Here's a link to the video the kids danced to:

http://youtu.be/5zuh2_v1hFo


The school has 24 students and 2 classes with 2 teachers. The nursery class is for 3-5 year olds and there are 15 bairns (Shetland for "children") with 1 teacher. The other class is the primary class for 6-11 year old children. There are 9 in this class with one teacher. She is also the principal. They have a secretary and an itinerant cook. They are down to bare bones in this school because of lack of funding and because there is a big threat to close the school and bus the kids to a more remote school. But they are not low in enthusiasm and energy to keep the school going.

It is sort of our equivalent of a 1 room rural school house, but this little school is very progressive. Here are some photos:

The sign on the front of the school says (in Shetland dialect): "Learning together, having fun, that's the way we get it done"



The primary classroom:


This little school has it's own wind generator that provides all the power needed by the school. What's left over, they sell.


They have their own greenhouse where the kids grow lettuce, potaoes, leeks, radishes, and herbs.




Look at the little wheelbarrows














It would be a crime to close this school.

After that, Jan drove us to a little hardware store in Brae to look for a few things for the bee hotel project. Then Jan asked us if we'd like to go "to tea"...so she treated us to tea at the Busta Hotel in Brae. It was such a treat! Here are some photos:
The room where we had tea:











Sara and I each had this amazing treat....sticky toffee pudding...but it was more like a really moist cake in a puddle of cream. It tasted every bit as good as it looked!

Location:Hillswick