Still Better Than Class....

Remember The Magic School Bus? Yeah, those kids didn't know how good they had it. Cut to two kids waiting to get on the flying nun bus one idle Tuesday:

Kid 1: Pleeeeeaaaase let this be a normal field trip.
Kid 2: With the Clanc? No way!

So, as we all know, the last actual outing field trip was to a Fen. Which is about a nine on the weirdness scale. This week's trip was to The Thames Barrier and a sewage pumping station. Let's start where we all started: The Thames Barrier.


Ah, there it is. Isn't it beautiful? Seriously though, the Thames Barrier was pretty cool. It's this set of rotating walls that they put up on the Thames to prevent all of London from flooding. And the sight of it in real life was even better! That said, there wasn't much else to do in that area to fill our two hours there.

I hear you asking, how exactly DOES this barrier work? I know, I was intrigued as well. Let's observe our beautiful "Thames Barrier Models" who will demonstrate how they work.




Now, let's pretend these lovely ladies from Room 17 are the ocean. Normally the barrier sits flat where the girl in the green shirt is standing, but right now it's in it's raised position, protecting the people of London. I know, it's all too interesting. What's more interesting is the sign (barely visible) in the corner that says "Positively no climbing". Can you say 'international incident'? tee hee hee.

Cara, our resident social justice advocate, noticed that dutch children were forced to fill sandbags in order to stop the flooding, pre-barrier. She has started up a campaign to right this terrible historical injustice. (Note: if you start looking into British history, the Dutch actually built pretty much everything.)

Anyway, she was pretty mad about the whole situation, as you can see.





So, after that thrilling couple hours, we headed out to the ol' sewer.

I would tell you the name of it, but the smell was so bad when we were being introduced, that I didn't pay attention. Evidently I wasn't the only one. Note that most people in this picture didn't know it was being taken.

The reason we went to a sewer is because we have an Environment class, and we were learning how political action often requires a catalyst in order to be noticed. In England, there had long been a problem with sewage getting into the water supply. Cholera broke out, life was gross, no one noticed.

Then there was a smell ("the big stink") outside the parliament buildings. It was so bad, in fact, that the government couldn't even sit. Guess how quickly money and legislation providing for sewage systems was run through parliament? Well, it was fast.

Marc is showing off a little interactive display of the smell. When you open the window and smell, it's supposed to be the same as "the big stink", and here Marc is wafting the smell over for me. However, we found it to be more like the smell of a well-kept outhouse than a major river that had been overrun by sewage, in the middle of the summer. This led me to speculate that perhaps the display is connected to the actual guest washrooms in the Learning centre, and they had just been cleaned.

Who knows.

Anyway, hopefully this will be our only shitty field trip this year. At least in the literal sense.