ice cream in nature

Today was our field trip planned for Eymir - the same lake I had taken my own kids over the weekend.  I helped prepare the first aid kits, reviewed my Epipen knowledge, and had all the students in the buses at 9am.  The driver I had been my old driver at my previous school, and said hello enthusiastically: Hocam! You don't remember me do you?  You were at the other school and in Birlik right?  It's my beard isn't it?  I really hate our bus company, but there is always comfort in the familiar - so we headed out on the buses and arrived a half an our later.  The buses dropped us off and we all headed down the private road on that circles the lake.

You need a permit to enter the lake area, but you're free to walk in by foot or bike.  We walked 1.5 kilometer's to the first buffet where all the kids bought ice cream and junk food.  It wasn't even 10:30.  We walked 500 more meters to another restaurant and buffet, and the kids bought more ice cream.

Here we split up into groups: a basketball court group, Science exploration group by the lake, a restaurant garden group for those that wanted to sit and chat (ME!), and a walking group.

I took the walking group because my homeroom students were begging me to continue on.  There were about 12 or 15 of us, and they were all my students.  Soon, they wanted to go off-road, so I took them to a spot I always take my kids.  The hill is actually to steep to climb, but they were all feeling adventurous (as was I), so I took them up the steep hill, forewarning that the climb down may be scary for some.  Two baled halfway, and I helped them down, but the rest were excited and screaming at the top of their "mountain".  They were pointing at the far away mountains taking if they could climb those.  It was a peninsula here so I told them to go ahead and continue ahead down the path - the worse they'd have to do is turn around.

When I caught up to them, after helping a few back down, they squealed with delight.  I took a picture, they initiated a moment of silence out of respect for nature, and then we began hiking back and they broke out spontaneously into song.  It was really sweet.

Then they all made a pact to not tell anyone how awesome their adventure was and so when we got back they told everyone it was so boring with me and they wouldn't recommend it, but they were going again after lunch an no one else could join....