It seems there is a little "Welcome Home" tradition developing when I return from home assignment. Upon my return from my last home assignment, I woke up one morning to a flat tire - a little "happy to see you again" gift from my car. This time I gave myself the gift in a much more dramatic style by running over a six inch pipe sticking out of the ground - a nice pop and "psssssszzzz" as the air fizzled out and all of this in front of a truckload of soldiers. Oh me, oh my!
The wonderful thing about Niger is that help is just around the corner. The security guard called the guy on the corner who fixes tires to come and he changed the tire after borrowing a workable jack from one of my friends. So help came quickly. Not only that, I now know that I need a new jack and four new tires. So I'm thankful for the wisdom God provides even out of my dumbest moves!
I sat down on the floor in the Atlanta Airport to stretch my legs out for a bit and watch the world go by. After a few minutes, along came two older gentlemen who sat down just opposite of me. One took off and deposited on the seat beside him a very interesting carryon filled with well loved bears.
As I listened to the conversation, I could tell that each bear had a name. And then, snack time began. One of the gentlemen opened a package of cheese and peanut butter crackers and before helping himself, he offered a cracker to each bear, even the small one in the back was not to be overlooked.
After the crackers came a snickers bar which was also offered to each bear before being consumed. And just in case there were any hungry bears left, they got one more chance at a nibble of a cheese and peanut butter cracker.
Things that make you go "hmm" and surreptitiously take a few photos too!
Back when I was in the Fifth grade my Mom threw me an April Fool's Birthday Party and the crowning moment was the beautifully decorated birthday cake which I cut into and suddenly realized was nothing more than a beautifully decorated cardboard box. Someone caught me right in the moments after. It was a pretty spectacular joke!
And apparently, I'm rather susceptible to it.
My friend Karen, who was at that first birthday party, had told her kids about that cake and they wanted to try their hand at it. I stood in the kitchen and watched Karen make a cookie cake in a 9X13 pan so I did think it pretty strange that the cake came out in a square but you know maybe it was double stacked!!! Anyway, here's the video proof of my falling prey to the joke a second time.
Did you hear me say, "How do I approach this? (referring to the cutting of the cake) I don't know what's under here." Oh, the irony!
My take away from this is that...
1. I have some awesome people in my life who always help me celebrate the life that God has given me in fun ways and
2. I'm never going to trust another birthday cake that doesn't come out with chocolate icing on it! And especially not if it's pink...don't mind me while I stab this thing to see if it's real. :)
Since I have no teaching stories to share this year, I thought it would be fun to share a gem of a story that we ran across while reading some letters to my Grandmother, who was a teacher in a one room schoolhouse in West Virginia. This story came in the form of a letter from one of her students.
Dear May,
In this world of growing up and going to school I am sure everyone has memories to treasure. Some are fond and some not so fond. Some are funny and others not so funny. I have one that hinges between funny and disastrous.
This little bit of memorabilia happened at High Rock School on Kesner Mountain. I, being a growing boy and having an appetite like a horse, became hungry well before lunch time. Knowing there was a fresh slice of chocolate pie in the top drawer of my lunch pail temptation got the best of me and I proceeded to remove it in preparation of an early snack.
No sooner had I secured it from my pail then I noticed my school teacher, namely May Kesner, proceeding my way. In desperation, I put the slice of pie on the top of the school bench behind me. By that time May had arrived and proceeded to park her backside smack dab on top of my pie. Needless to say, my slice of chocolate pie had become squashed and glued to the backside of her skirt. After a few kind words to me stating that I had been a bit noisy, she walked back up front to her desk. As she made her way back to her desk the chocolate pie was depositing itself on the floor in spatters. Everyone in school was bursting a the seams with laughter - except May and I, who was scared half to death. After our teacher asking numerous students what was so funny and receiving no answer, she finally gave us all two minutes to laugh at the end of which time total silence was demanded. We didn't waste a second of it!
Well, May, if you can forgive me for messing up your skirt, I can stand the loss of a delicious slice of chocolate pie.
Chalk this one up under weird things. One day I was walking along the sidewalk by my old classroom and heard this incredible buzzing sound. Turns out there were hundreds of flies gathered on the tree beside the sidewalk. I've never seen such a phenomenon before and I'm not quite sure what would cause them to gather like that but there they were.
I had a moment of panic last night which has now become the motivation for this post. You see, one of my students last year drew an amazing picture at the end of the year, full of detail and humour and I thought I had downloaded it and so I deleted it off my camera. But then I couldn't find it anywhere on my computer. Thankfully, my external hard drive saved the day and I can share this gem with the world.
My students were reflecting on how God had helped them in the past year and this is what this little guy had to say.
Note the towering stack of paper, the rubbish bin full of scrunched up attempts and the one about to hit the trash. Clearly it was hard work learning to write in Korean!
This little guy is Italian. He came into my classroom with no English at all. He had already begun to learn French so I could communicate with him through that. I have to say I have never seen a student learn a language like this guy did.
