Bush medicine

We've all gone crazy with power!!! So much electricity!!! Not enough things to turn on!


My voice completely disappeared yesterday. Now I'm feeling better, but my voice is coming out in a croak. Good thing we are studying frogs at the moment. The kids (after an initial phase of testing me at every turn) are now quite sweet and sympathetic. I'm sure it'll be a funny day doing the whole school in mime and croaks.

After school Simon and Angelina went into the bush to with a machete to find some bush medicine for my throat. I'm not sure if they got the right tree, because I brewed it into tea as they instructed. It tasted bitter as heck. The kids tried it and spit it out saying it didn't taste right. I had to eat chocolate to get the horrible taste out of my mouth.

I asked their Mum and it seems the kids did get the wrong bush medicine. Instead of sore throat medicine, they brought me the cure for cancer. That's why it tasted so horrible. You have to be really sick before you'd stomach the stuff. I only took a few sips and it won't do me any harm. And if I did unknowingly have cancer, I would now be cured.

The transit of Venus happened yesterday and in this part of the world it was visible from sunrise until noon. The sky is always clear at this time of year. We tried to pin hole method. It sucked. We then tried the binocular method. We couldn't tell the dust on the lens from a small planet passing before the sun. We then bit the bullet and tried the welders mask. There are conflicting reports of whether that is safe or not, so I only let the kids look for five seconds at a time. It was great. We saw the dot very clearly.

Apparently someone saw cherries at the supermarket here last week. We wonder where they could have come from, because it sure isn’t cherry season here. They must have come all the way from California. I'll have to sample them when I get to town to remind me of SF in cherry season. They sure have come a looooong way.