Not in a million years...

would I have imagined that today I'd inadvertently eat some clams. Yep yep. It happened. At school. During the reward activity.

So here's the difference between every other school I've ever been to in my thirty years and the school I teach at: rewards here do not constitute popcorn or ice cream but raspados and some weird concoction served in a glass. First the raspados - they are basically homemade snow cones. Which would be fine except they were running low when my kids got to the front of the line so they got the weird concoction. And because the line was taking too long, the other teachers and I started handing out the concoction and low and behold, I got some of it on my fingers. Thinking it was tomato juice, I licked it off. No big deal. Right. Famous last words.

But here's what was in the concoction - they take a cup and fill it with fried tortilla strips that are rolled and dipped prior to serving. They're kinda like churros, which I see people mostly at Sam's Club. Anyway. They fill the cup with these churro/cheeto looking things and pour in what I thought was tomato juice. But no - it's clamato juice. And then they top it with diced cucumber. And that's called a reward here. In my book it's called gross but to each culture their own....

The kids seemed to really like this, at least the Mexican kids. I'll find out more tomorrow as this was the end of the day. But after I licked all the clamato juice off my fingers I realized what it was. And then it dawned on me, I'm allergic to clamato juice (all shellfish technically). And I started to freak a little. So here's Ms. Knapp, abandoning her children to go get Benadryl from her purse and buy a diet coke and chug it in front of the kids (a big no-no). So yeah, that was fun today.

I was fine, and probably would have been without the Benadryl anyway since it was so little an amount. But never in a million years would I have guessed they'd serve my kids ground up clams as a reward. It's seriously like I live in another country:-)