Gas, Jeopardy, Belgium, Orange Juice, Frostfest, Aardbeien

Gas is down to $1.73 per gallon! How LOW will it go? Too bad I can't stock up and buy a years' supply. ... although I did fill up all my gas cans. Yesterday, I played a Jeopardy game with my classes, where the questions and answers came directly from material that they should have learned during the semester. All of this material has been gone over in class... several times. Surprisingly, four of the five teams ended up with negative scores! What was more surprising was, at the end of the game, after I'd revealed all the right questions and answers, I gave a 10-question quiz, 1 point per question, listing questions that had been in the Jeopardy game. I figured I'd give them an opportunity to bring up their overall course grades. Wrong. The average score on the quiz was ... 6.1 points! Out of 10! And they had just minutes earlier been given the questions and the answers! Sheesh. I don't know what's wrong with this crop of students. The term "DAAP" comes to mind, where the last word is "post" and the first word rhymes with "rum". I've been receiving a good response to my plans for a reunion of my 2004 Belgium semester-abroad program. It looks like we may have between 20 and 25 students (out of the 30) coming to the reunion in Antwerp next July. Oranges are coming back in season. I love fresh-squeezed orange juice. I need to buy my tickets for the Frostfest. They offer a 20% discount if you buy them early. The Frostfest is the big ham radio "hamfest" flea market in Richmond held every February. Guess why they call it the "frostfest"! Dubby and I had dinner tonight in Harrisonburg with Tim and Barbara L. and Brad and Adele R.. Tim and Barb were Faculty Members In Residence (FMIR) for the Semester in Antwerp program last Spring, and Brad and Adele are going to be the FMIR's this coming Spring. We all had a great time tonight around the table at the restaurant, practicing our Flemish. "Het drie aardappelen en het vlees es aan de bord bij het wortsel, niet bij aardbeien. Mijn twee zwart schoenen es onder de tafel." Oh, by the way, aardbeien is Flemish for strawberries.