What has Laneway Learning been up to recently I hear you ask? Well read on to find out about the first two weeks of May…
We started with Emotional Intelligence Uncovered with Peter McKay. We covered some really fascinating stuff regarding psychology, emotions and empathy, including a discussion on ‘how emotionally intelligent is your manager?’
Then, just to mix it up a bit, we learnt about Zombie Movies! Yes, zombie movies, thanks to Halo Jones. With chats about the history and development of the genre and iconic scenes acted out with finger puppets (!) we had a lot of fun. We even found out about super tasty zombie chews from Pakistan!
For another Monday at Ferdydurke we had a session on Italian for Beginners with our Penguins and Chess teacher Alisdair Horgen. Despite not being a native speaker of Italian, Alisdair teamed up his natural teaching ability with his high school and uni knowledge, and one person from the night suggested that she had learnt more in those 75 minutes that in a full on four-week course! Result!
Following on Alisdair’s heels we had Oliver Woods and The Underside of the Internet. We talked about hackers, cybercrime and that dark side of the internet that Google doesn’t reach – cool stuff. meanwhile, back in The Little Mule, Scottish expat Lindy Berkerman talked all about Edible Beauty. We made coffee scrubs and chocolate and coconut masks, and found out that there is scientific backing to Cleopatra’s sour milk baths – the lactic acid in off-milk removes dead skin cells, revealing that shiny fresh skin underneath.
Then, in Wine: A One Night Palate Trainer with our resident wine connoisseur Clare Burder, we talked about sugar, acid, tannin and all the other things that feature in the wine making process. And of course, we got to sip on some of the good stuff throughout!
We also learnt how to give our clothes some much needed TLC in Some Basic Clothes Repair with one of the Laneway Learning Team, Lucie Bradley. Whether it was missing buttons, holes or rips we worked some needle and thread magic to put life back into our favourite garments.
For some sibling rivalry we also hosted Ronan Burder and his class on Origami: The Ancient Papercraft. Just like Clare, Ronan ran a great class and there were cranes everywhere, as well as a whole menagerie of other papery animals.
Finally, to get us up to date, last night we had Anthropology and Tequila.
In anthropology our teacher for the night, Simone Anesich, gave us a whistle stop tour covering what anthropology actually is and then everything from tribal life in far off places to the London Riots of 2012. Wow.
And then, in our tequila class, Nick Reid taught us all about, well, tequila! Did you know that legally tequila can only be made from the blue weber agave plants grown in five Mexican states? Or that this plant takes seven years to grow? We also got to taste some different tequilas and realise that, just like wine, it’s actually pretty sophisticated stuff.