Another week is now in the books! This week we were back in the U.S. in Indianapolis for the Indy 500 weekend. Just being back in the Midwest felt like being home even though I had never been to Indy before.

We started out the week by visiting some elementary schools around Indy. It was a lot of fun talking to the kids about the GEC and seeing their eyes light up when they saw the trailer. The bees were by far and away, a big hit among the students. What kid doesn’t want to see a beehive and bees flying around in a contained ecosystem? We also shared with the kids our Integrated Pest Management system and why ladybugs are so important to our greenhouses. I was so impressed with how smart the students were! There were many who knew that ladybugs eat the bad bugs and they knew how bees pollinate plants.

Some of the classes wrote thank you notes to the GEC team for coming to talk to them and some of the students remembered by name and addressed it right to me. It was so cute to see what they wrote! Seeing the notes was a really great feeling because hopefully that means that they took something away from the trailer and maybe they will remember something from the day, even if it is just that they saw some bees and took home a sample of our cherry tomatoes.

The rest of the week was spent at Kroger stores around the area. While we were there, I had some really great interactions with customers and management at the store. One of the assistant managers made a special announcement over the loud speaker telling people to see the trailer and sample our cherry tomatoes, so that was really special and nice that he would go out of his way like that.

I’ve also discovered this week that I enjoy running the Green in the City tour snapchat! Add us on snapchat at: greeninthecity and get some behind the scenes look at the tour from my perspective or from the perspectives of my teammates!