For whatever reason, I took some of the most interesting classes in high school just to avoid getting out of a study hall. Study hall was stupid and pointless because you were supposed to spend it studying, but were instead constantly interrupted by the people who weren't studying and the teachers who were trying to enforce the rule that everyone should be studying.

In order to avoid sitting there in some blocked-off corner of the auditorium, ostensibly working on things for other classes, I served as a teacher's assistant for a gym class (me?!) and took Jewelry and Design.

At the end of my semester in Jewelry and Design, I left with several self-designed and self-created pieces of jewelry that were both too ugly to wear and too ugly to give away (I may still have them in a jewelry box somewhere). I also left with significantly thinner and/or shorter eyebrows and bangs.

The equipment we used in Jewelry and Design was fairly old, particularly the strikers that we used to spark the blow torches. We would turn on the gas, then use the striker to set the gas on fire. At least this was how it was supposed to work in theory. In practice, the first strike never worked. Frequently the second didn't either. We would stand there with the torch in our right hand, trying over and over to make a spark with our left as the cloud of gas built up around our heads. Finally, the ancient striker would do its business and the whole cloud of gas would ignite, singing off bangs and eyebrows in the process.

All in all, still better than study hall, though...

I went there on an unusually warm February day when I'd been traveling by myself and was getting bored and lonely. Being in the sunshine, communing with nature and history, I came to appreciate that I was traveling alone and enjoy the experience.