We arrived in Somerset on Monday night after a much longer-than-expected day of driving. We left on Sunday and drove to Abingdon. According to Google Maps, that was slightly less than the half-way point leaving us only about 4 hours to go. We left out on Monday morning to finish up the trip when our Garmin routed us on some smaller highways to “save time.” Well those smaller highways were taking us right to Big Stone Gap! That’s not a road you want to drive in a 65 feet semi! Cindy quickly grabbed the map and saved us from our “near-death” experience routing us back to Interstate 81. We finally pulled into Somerset around 5pm. After checking into the hotel, we made our way to the local Cracker Barrel to grab some food.
Ethan and I were up early this morning (around 6am) to get ready for our first workshop of the week. Our host picked us up around 7:30am and we made our way to the Eubank Elementary School. The first thing on the agenda was a workshop with the special education teachers. We had a great time exploring how to effectively use magic tricks in the classroom to help students maintain their focus and reach their goals.
Once the teachers had the grasp of the concepts of HOCUS FOCUS (Healing of Magic), we spent the rest of the day working with several smaller groups of students.
After our morning sessions, we had lunch in the school cafeteria with some of the students. It’s been a long time since I’ve waited in a cafeteria line with second graders! After lunch, we worked with another group of students – 4th and 5th graders – who managed to learn lots of tricks – and loved showing them off. I’m sure their families are seeing a magic show tonight.
Tomorrow, we did it all again at another school. Our main performance is on Friday at the Center For Rural Development.