Flat Adventures

Are you familiar with Flat Stanley? The little paper cutout of a boy named Stanley who travels around on adventures with people? And teachers have their students do the same thing as a project? I once had my photo taken with a Flat Stanley at a wine tasting. I think he got some red wine on him. Or maybe you saw that George Clooney movie Up in the Air, where he had that photo cutout of his sister? Well, a friend of mine has a daughter whose class made their own Flat Kids, and she asked if I could take Flat Kid with me on a trip. I did feel slightly like George when I had all my travel work stuff packed and then saw the Flat Kid and had to figure out where it was going to fit without getting hurt. It was actually kind of fun, and made me take photos of things I otherwise might not have.  So here goes - my Flat Kid adventures, as written for real-life Kid's 2nd grade class, with adult interpretation after each section.

Flat Kid and I flew in an airplane up to Maine. We saw the Atlantic Ocean, which is very big! Everybody eats a lot of lobster in Maine. We went to a famous candy store that has a life-size moose made of chocolate! Here is a picture of us with the Chocolate Moose. He weighs as much as a car. Can you imagine how much chocolate that is? At home it is spring, but it is still winter in Maine. We had to leave early because of a very big snow storm that was coming. [You know that icky green stuff under a lobster's thorax? I totally ate some of it, and was flabbergasted to learn it's the best part! So sweet and rich you couldn't eat more than a small bite. A Nor'easter was due April 1st, so I had to fly out early, along with the entire visiting population of Maine. The flights were delayed and I was going to miss my connection. They couldn't get me home for the night, but could get me to DC. I called my parents and they happily picked me up at the airport that night. I spent the night at their house and it helped inject some relief & normalcy in that long weird week.]
 
 Next Flat Kid and I flew to Dallas, Texas. The plane was high up over the clouds. One school-day is enough time to fly all the way from Maine to Texas. [I find it amazing you can leave here at 6 am and land in California at 10am, yet if you leave CA at 6 am you won't make it home until almost 6 pm.]

The land is very small when you are up so high. We saw a brown twisted river, and wondered what it was. We knew only one river is that big up in a plane – the Mississippi River. Do you see where the river almost touches itself? One day the two parts of the river will touch. The loop will turn into a special lake, called an oxbow lake. Can you see the town next to the river? [I'm not normally much of a window sight-seer, but I found it super cool to catch the Mississippi and to recognize it. On one trip I actually saw our house as we were leaving the airport - I saw the interstate and started looking for landmarks, and then saw our house. Neato!]

In Texas we went to a museum with a lot of statues from India. There were statues everywhere – even in the bathroom! Here is a statue of an Indian Elephant. It was taller than an adult man. Two of these statues guarded the door. It was fun to see them so close. [This is not quite true, but it was too hard to explain to kids that we were in a really weird hotel done in Indian art. The rooms had really creepy alien-like heads on pedestals that freaked us all out.  And everywhere you turned were giant buddha statues or other things. most of them were really beautiful, but egads not what you want to be sleeping in the midst of.] 

After Texas we flew home. It was a fun trip, but our hometown is the best place to be! [This was a tough trip. Wed, Thurs, Fri, and Sun were all flying travel days. 75% of my work is done on email/internet, so all the blackout time really made it hard to keep up with things. But we all survived and I made it home!]