I have to admit, when I arrived at Okte Elementary last week I was unprepared for what I encountered. In fact, I feel it’s my duty to warn anyone considering a visit to the school. If you go, know one thing: the whole place is full of bugs.

My first clue came as soon as I walked in the door and encountered this wall, completely covered in insects, most of them with human-like faces.

The bugs continued down the hall, up the stairs, and into the library where I found them hanging from strings all around the room. But it didn’t stop there; as the kids started coming in I began to notice something strange: every single one of them had their own T-shirt with a custom-designed bug on it!

These were incredible, and in all my years of school visits I’ve never encountered anything quite like it. I can’t even begin to imagine how much work these must have been to make, but I’m told an army of volunteers worked their fingers to the bone in order to get them ready in time. But the best was yet to come. Look what I got…

As you can probably imagine, the whole day was great. I got to spend a lot of time with the kids, had a delicious lunch with the faculty (thanks Gina Scotto di Carlo!) and even had a special desert with a bunch of representatives from each of the grades.

Before I knew it, the day was over, but I’ll always have that cool shirt to remind me of my visit to the buggiest school ever. Thanks to Ms. Walton, Ms. Kelly, Ms. Waters, and Ms. Grabowski for all their efforts. It was great!