Random Thoughts on a Tuesday

In Dubai, we work Sunday to Thursday with Friday/Saturday weekends.  So my Tuesday is my Wednesday. It's hump day. Like get over the hump and three days of work done with two to go. Tuesday is Wednesday like everyday is Sundae at Carvel.

Told the kids it was hump day today and they wondered what sort of camel joke I was invoking.

If I taught high school, I am sure hump would have evoked a different response.

Mr. Cat at his desk pondering life.

I can't get this song out of my head. It's a former student of mine who makes tunes. He's like Moby meets Beck but way different from them too. He had Mr. Cat for eighth grade language arts in NY which clearly altered his landscape enough to foster the creative spirit. Go Mark, go.

The coolest thing possible about teaching is turning on light bulbs for kids to analyze and then watching them use those skills. Amazing when you stop to reflect upon all the students you helped along the way and how much they reenergized your own life. In the words of Ad Rock: "My job ain't a job it's a damn good time- [school to school]- I'm rocking my rhyme."

This week I am also amazed at all the cosmic karma and people that swirl around the Cat-Egan vortex. Notes from former students in Saudi Arabia drift in with posts from colleagues around the globe. Last weekend, a former colleague from Norway, now in Singapore, stopped through on her way back from Russia. That alone is a wacky sentence.

But when you look further and find that she visited our former Norwegian colleagues who now live in Russia, who know our friends teaching in Cairo- and that Crystal was going back to Singapore to teach with my college roommate and his wife, the first colleague I ever knew on Maui- along with a teaching couple we worked with in Aramco and NH- it's a headache inducing round of "It's a small world." And amazingly, another former colleague from Stavanger is en route to Dubai from Jordan on his way to Nepal. He is spending 22 hours with us as his layover.

And then at school, we prepared to make recycled plastic bottle "rafts" to race on earth day in April. And the lessons of the past collide with the present. I am reminded of of different raft riding in the gulf on empty oil drums with Aramco crystal ware at stake. I still think Team Manila cheated us at the midway point in the race when they cut into our lane, but it's old news. July in Arabia means delirious heat and hot tub temperature water.

The Abqaiq Bulldogs Raft Race Team, circa 1998

[from left to right, KB, Cheesester, Double D, Hobbsy, Pratt, Hobson, Cat, Iggs]

Later this week, our spring break will begin and we are off to Uganda. The trip is run by an organization our friend here in Dubai started called SEENAH. We are going to help build a health center at a school there and bring gifts and supplies to the school children. Rosie and Bella are going to be introduced to service learning and helping other kids first hand. The journals, conversations and memories will be amazing. But meeting, helping and playing with the children will bring us all the greatest joy. Afterward we will go on safari and see the natural beauty of Uganda as well. And so the journey continues.

Happy Tuesday. Get over that hump and smile.