Hey Blog! It’s been rather busy blog-wise over these past weeks, so in this three-in-one post I’ll report on all that happened in a big day out – a trip to York, to visit two exhibitions; the monthly games club; and finally today, when I went to meet my Humanatees tutor Jake in person for the very first time!
You may remember a certain post on going to visit an exhibition of Van Gogh’s artwork in Leicester. At the end of it I said that we were planning to go again, this time with some friends. Well, this has happened! We went to see the same exhibition, but this time in York, as the Van Gogh experience was also on there, and also a different exhibition on ‘rebels in children’s literature’ in one of the York museums. As they both ran simultaneously for a short time, we could fit in both! I’m not going to detail the Van Gogh experience, as I have done so already, so for this see An Art Experience, 28th Feb. The other, however, I will detail.
We had to get up at six to drive to Derby and meet the friends who were coming – they’re one of the families we went to London with last year and we see them almost every Wednesday – then together we took the train to York station. We went to the Van Gogh experience, and then, after a quick lunch break, straight on the ‘rebels’ exhibition. It was good. As it was focusing on literature, it included all sorts of characters I have read and others I have never heard of before. There were a few famous ones, like Oliver Twist by Dickens, Matilda by Dahl, and Anne of Green Gables by Montgomery (in all of these the titular character was the rebel) but a few I had never heard of, such as Howl’s Moving Castle or Noughts and Crosses. Past the bulk of the exhibition was an area where the books from the exhibition were on a bookshelf – I began to read… Once, after moving back from overseas before we had a house here, I used to use shops like libraries – I would choose a book, and the next shop we went into I would find the same book and jump to where I had left off! Luckily, my shelves have expanded somewhat since then and I now usually buy the book if I want it that much!
Last Friday was Games Club. This is a monthly meet-up for home-ed families to play games together, as I have told you before, but this time it was run outside! Therefore, games like boule and twister were able to be played, as well as table games. Consequently it was a lot of fun.
Today, I went to meet Jake. He is my humanities tutor, teaching Geography, History, Philosophy and other human-based subjects, but today I went to his house for the first time to take part in a debate. There were only five debaters, and Jake, of course, leading it and giving us points for good or bad arguments. The rules were – a good argument for your side: 1 point. Explaining your argument: 1 point. Insulting someone personally: -1 point. Interrupting an opening argument or closing argument: -1 point. We did three debates, the first being “Should we use giraffes in war?”! As my mum frequently points out, Jake is nuts – but in a good way! My side won that argument – that we shouldn’t, by making points like, “They’re peaceable creatures, they don’t want to fight,” and “If we take them away from their natural habitat, the ecosystem will collapse.” The next question was a little more sensible, as it was “Should we eat meat?” My side lost, even though we tried. Both of these the difference between the scores were only 1 point, but the third – and hardest question – was, after Jake had swapped the teams around, “Are animals better than humans?” and in the end the team I was on lost that one by six points, though this was probably due to half the team drawing pictures of monkeys on the whiteboard to try and do diagrams to try to make points instead of actually thinking hard! It was still immensely fun, and I would love to do another one in person! I have just started a one-year Environmental Management GCSE course with Jake, so I will be seeing him quite regularly.
This is getting rather loooong, so see you soon!