Attack of the Penguins

I wish you all could have been here on Friday, not just to welcome the arrival of our truck, but for my English class!

In an effort to once-and-for-all convince my class of 12 older men and 1 woman that Antarctica DOES indeed exist and is NOT a figment of my imagination, Friday we watched 20 minutes of "March of the Penguins."

They had never heard of Antarctica whenever we were learning the 7 continents last week. In all fairness, my explanation of a "snowy, icy place that where people don't really live" must have sounded something like a version of Santa's workshop at the North Pole. They had also never heard of penguins ("are they like ostriches?") nor of mountains made of ice ("are you trying to trick us?").

So I turned on "March of the Penguins" first thing Friday morning, and sat in the back of the class for a highly amusing 20 minutes of watching my students watch the film.
Apparently at some point Benjamin had seen the movie "Titanic", and he rapidly became the head instructor as the class fired thousands of questions in the 20 minutes.

"ICEBERG!" he kept saying. "Everybody dies!"

They couldn't believe the penguins, all laughing at their strange ways and commenting over and over about their "suits...they're going to chapel!" and about how much they looked like people whenever they are all lined up and marching across the "white sand." "Look, they're talking!" "Look, they're kissing!" "Look! They're playing soccer!"

The wide range shots of the icy glaciers just blew everyone away (including me), and I overheard my eldest student explain to the rest that once whenever he was young it was that cold in Haiti, and that sometimes, in the mountains, they get that much snow. "But no penguins."

"Everybody dies!" our expert kept saying, as they continued to watch the penguins with utter fascination. Finally, I skipped to the credits, where the film finally shows a few shots of the men making the film. As soon as the first man, head to toe in orange snow gear, appeared, everyone yelled, "He's going to DIE!" and then were completely disappointed whenever the penguins just peered curiously into his camera instead of devouring him.

"Aren't they evil?" someone finally asked to no one in particular. "I don't think so," someone said. "I think they're just like short men."

When I finally turned off the movie, everyone was quite sure they had never seen so much white sand (no matter HOW many times I said 'SNOW') and that if penguins were just short men after all, they would like to meet some, but not if they had to wear orange clothes and goggles. ("Do they need those glasses to see the penguins?")

Last year, I insulted everyone as a woman by trying to correct them whenever it came to things like this. This year, I just let everyone enjoy their own perspectives of a place that I cannot really imagine either. Sometimes I wish so badly I could put everyone on a plane and spend just one day somewhere completely different than here. Growing up a the Columbus Zoo, traveling, going to camp, swimming in the ocean and hiking the Grand Canyon automatically gave me such a capacity to imagine things I have not seen!

However, I realize too, as I watch them interact and hear them preach and see them love each other, love their country, love their people, praise the Lord, and ask day after day in class that I pray that they KNOW God MORE...that whether they believe in Antarctica or penguins, icy roads or water parks, Jupiter, bears, Wal-Mart or mega-churches REALLY makes no difference at all.

If you ever come and visit, bring a National Geographic film of ANYTHING, and we'll all watch it with you...I'm pretty sure they, and me with them, haven't laughed so hard in weeks. We all serve a mighty God!