At school, Jayden and his classmates are reading books from the Flat Stanley series by Jeff Brown. The books are about a young boy named Stanley who is accidentally flattened “as flat as a pancake” when a bulletin board falls on him while he is asleep. Stanley is very, very flat but otherwise fine. Stanley’s family did not have enough money to send him on a train or plane to visit a friend in California, so they decided to fold him up and put him in a large envelope and mail him. The teacher Ms.Chang had the kids make their own “Flat Friends” and send them on their own worldwide adventures. Jayden decided that he wanted his Flat-self to visit Auntie Alisa and Uncle Lawrence in Scotland.
And so the adventure begins...
And yes, Flat Jayden is stylin' in his tuxedo, converse shoes, and martini glass (he had assured me, "it's just juice mama" - notice the ice cubes "on the rocks").
(I've pasted this from our class blog, if you'd like to see more of the original blog, you can click on the title of the link below. Thanks to our guest bloggers - Alisa and Lawrence.)
Scotland is over 5000 miles away from California and 8 hours ahead on the clock so we’ve given him a few days to recover from the jet lag. Now he is rested and ready to go exploring! We did manage to get him out of bed long enough last Saturday to celebrate his birthday with cake and ice cream – Happy Birthday Jayden!
Jayden’s Aunty Alisa and Uncle Lawrence live in the North West region of Scotland, an area called the Highlands, in a small village of 1500 people called Ullapool. Ullapool (the “U” is pronounced the same as the “u” in hut) was established in 1788 as a herring port, which means fishing was the livelihood for people here back in the day. Fishing is still done today but not to the same extent. We thought we would show Flat Jayden the main pier to see if we could lend a hand to the fishermen. No fish today so we sipped our drinks and watched the boats instead.
Next we visited the shops to see if we could find a kilt to fit Flat Jayden. Kilts are a traditional garment worn by men in Scotland, usually on formal occasions. It is most often made from woollen cloth in a tartan pattern and is supposed to fit to knee-length, although Flat Jayden’s legs would have to grow ten times longer to fit in this one! To the left of Flat Jayden you can see some heather which is the most abundant flower growing in Scotland, covering over 5 million acres. Also in the picture is “Nessie”, a cartoon stuffed-animal version of the Loch Ness Monster, a pre-historic creature which is said to live in Loch Ness, although no real evidence has been found yet to prove it.
The main language spoken in Scotland is English, although the old traditional language is called Gaelic. Not very many people speak fluent Gaelic anymore but it is still taught in some schools to help keep the language alive. The word loch for example, is the Gaelic word for lake. Now you know some Gaelic too!
More Flat Jayden adventures on the way. Stay tuned!
