Rain, Snow, Sleet, and Hell

I love living in Utah.  I feel like laughing at Utah two posts in a row may give the impression I don't like it.  I do.  The mountains are gorgeous.  My friends are great.  My job has a lot of perks.  So, if you happen to be from Utah, don't be too offended as I make fun of you for a minute.  It's okay.  We have the same problem in Idaho.

I am currently teaching about the water cycle.  We go through a zillion words that all end in -tion: evaporation, condensation, transpiration, percolation, accumulation, and on and on.  One of the kids' favorites is precipitation.  It's one of mine too--first, because they actually know what I am talking about (because they have seen it), and secondly because it appears no one in this state seems to be able to say the word hail and it kind of makes me giggle.  Secretly.

Class usually goes something like this:

Me: "Who can name one of the forms of precipitation?"
Kid 1: "RAIN!"
Me: "Yes!  Rain.  What else?"
Kid 2: "Snow."
Me: "Yep, we didn't get a lot this winter, but definitely snow."
Kid 3: "Sleet."
Me: "Sure!  What is sleet?  Yeah, kind of a cross between rain and snow.  Kind of slushy."
Kid 4: "Hell."
Me: "WHAT?"
Kid 4: "Hell."
Me: "Um...hAil?"
Kid 4: "Yeah...hell, those frozen things that come down and they can be as big as a baseball and, like, hit you in the head."

Right.  Rain, snow, sleet, and hell.  The four basic types of precipitation.

It's not quite so bad when it's thrown in with other words like rain and snow, but last time I went home, they sang "We'll Sing All Hail to Jesus' Name" in church.

Now, having mentioned Idaho is just as bad as Utah, it won't take long for you to figure out why I was laughing so hard I was almost crying while my mom was elbowing me and giving me that look she would give me when I was a naughty kid.  (Although I could see her laughing too...)

The best part of the whole thing was that we were the only people in the room who seemed to notice anything was funny at all.