Guns & Dynamite

I just woke up from a 4-hour nap... I had the craziest dream--all in French--about these French tourists who were yelling at me in the information center at Mt. Rushmore... then a lot of my U of M professors showed up... interpretations? Anyway, today was exhausting but quite cool at the same time.

I gave 2 ranger walks today; the first was to a German family who didn't speak any English... in extremely broken English, they asked Charlie if there were any German tours of the park, and Charlie grabs me and pushes me at them. "Ouch Charlie, you hurt my finger!"

The second ranger walk that I gave was to 100 2nd graders from a school in Rapid City. It was an abridged version, of course, but the questions I got were quite interesting...
"When they made a mistake carving the mountain, did they use dynamite to get rid of it, or did they shoot the mistake off with a gun?"
"Did you carve Mt. Rushmore?"

I also asked questions to which I got some amazing responses...
"What did Thomas Jefferson have that other presidents didn't have?"---"Leadership!"
"Which war did Abraham Lincoln end?"---"The Civil War! My grandpa fought in the Civil War!"

In other news, there was a couple who came into the information center today with their ten children, all between the ages of 1 and 13. (The mother was also pregnant with the eleventh...) Don't people understand the value of having a television in the bedroom?!

Anyway, that's all for tonight. I need to write an e-mail to that NJ class (from Flat Stanley), so that I can send him back tomorrow. Good night!
Jake