A favorite blogger/author of mine, Emily Freeman, has a monthly series titled “What I Learned”.  Each month she looks back on the previous month and lists a few things she found out that she hadn’t known before.  These little gems of knowledge can be serious, fun or both.  I love this for a few reasons:

1. My website is called She’s Becoming because we are ALL in process.  Each day we are different than we were the day before.  Learning is happening all the time so why not keep track of what we are gathering?
2. Learning something new and then passing that information along is a favorite thing of mine.
3. Marking time, makes time slow…don’t we all want that?

Without further ado, here are a few tidbits that I learned in October:

1.  I learned about podcasts over the summer and have enjoyed listening to them ever since.  Most of them provide some sort of learning although I listen to a few just for fun. In October I started listening to my current favorite, Serial.  It is a story told one week at a time.  In my imagination, this is what listening to radio shows must have been like.  I finish each episode and then can hardly wait until the next Thursday when the new one comes out.  Promise me you’ll check it out.

2.  A donut frier can put out 2400 mini donuts and hour.  That is 2400 bites (or 4800 if you are being dainty) of pumpkiny, sugary delight that melts in your mouth.  I also learned that you have to eat them fast enough to get some before the kids eat them all but not so fast that you burn all the skin off your tongue.

3.  On a field trip with the 3rd/4th grade class I learned:

• Trees with leaves are called deciduous trees.
• They must lose their leaves in the winter or they will starve to death.  They can’t absorb enough water during winter to keep the trees and leaves alive.  Who knew?
• Franciscan nuns follow the ways of St. Francis of Assisi and (at least the place we were visiting) care deeply about the environment and tending to the earth and God’s creation.
• When you own land and have it in a conservancy, it will stay exactly as it is FOREVER.  Like, really forever.

4.  While this may not be the best foodie photo ever taken, the taste MORE than makes up for it.  How lovely would it be to sit together by the fire on this wet, chilly evening and sip a beverage whilst dipping crackers, pretzels, pretzel bread or a spoon in this delightful dip?  I am a lover of all things creamy and dippish and this more than fits the bill.  Those are olives in there by the way…and cream cheese…and butter.  ‘Nuff said.

5.  When the situation calls for it, a gal can put on a cheerleading uniform and join forces with a principal in a duck costume (leading the chicken dance of all things) and have all kinds of fun at a pep rally.  Apparently, you can take the girl out of the cheerleader but you can’t take the cheerleader out of the older girl.  It sure was fun.

I could go on but I imagine you are getting bored by now.  Until next time….

What did you learn in October?  Leave a comment and let me know!