just for this moment

(click to enlarge)

My kids eat off the floor.

And I get strange looks for calling them my kids. (Not from them – I don't do it to their faces.) But that's what teachers do, they refer to "their" kids. It somehow makes storytelling easier. And I really shouldn't be teased by my cousin over this – she obsessively caters to her chihuahua, Evie, calling her "my little black person." At least my children have the knowledge between right and wrong, and the language to express it. (Of course, in cousin's opinion, Evie has these skills and more.)

I just looked up what Google thinks separates us from animals and humans, and I found an interesting page. Well, it's not that interesting, but I quite enjoyed number six:

"6. Anxiety over death. Humans–especially Kierkegaard–worry about what happens to them after they die."

Especially Kierkegaard, huh? Not that I'm disputing the assertion, it just seemed like they were going for more general answers. I mean, humans have opposable thumbs – especially Da Vinci.

Speaking of weird names and Google searches, apparently the latest celebrity trend is naming their children really generic names. That way they can't be tracked down as easily as, oh MoonUnit and Dweezle Zappa. I initially found this idea upsetting – I like my world properly ordered, and if I'm expected to mindlessly fawn over celebrities like they're a different species, I would prefer that they have distinctive names to add to their mystique.

**

Back to my children, though. They (or the six year olds anyways) really do prefer eating off the dubiously colored carpet at the learning center. And not on little plastic plates or containers, no, they take bags and containers of snacks and dump them out directly onto the ground. This week they gave up on any pretense of humanity and took turns begging like dogs for each other's snacks. One kid would scramble after another on his hands and knees, pretending to pant and beg for a snack. The other "human" would toss a snack for his buddy to go fetch. Yes, on the carpet. The carpet which has seen stale mushy snacks, various bug collections, pants wetting, etc.

**

A hobby of the older students is changing the names of the desktop icons. One of the kids alerted me to a completely altered desktop, and I had quite an amusing time changing the labels back. The "Internet Explorer" icon had been changed to "Brian is so fat he was baptized in Sea World." "Excel" was now "Daniel Yi likes men." You get the point.

I was telling a friend of mine some of my kids' more ridiculous shenanigans and she laughed and told me that I was the type of teacher that had driven us crazy when we were young. Yeah, probably. I'm Miss Wormwood, Mr. Feeny, etc. It's just not as fun when you aren't directly involved/held unaccountable for your actions. I guess I'm just not magical anymore.


Quote of the Day: "Fairy Tales to rummage sales, we all love a dream."

-Darden Smith, Austin singer/song writer

i don't know why you say goodbye i say hello

GLEE. (is back and more dramatic than ever)

This will be brief.

Random sign in Oman that just popped into my head: "Welcome to SAPCO, please come always." I don't actually remember the wording, but I'm almost positive that's what it said.

We were also down the street from a "Typical Dental Clinic" – the connotations of "typical" having been confused in translation. Naturally the "T" was rubbed off and it was simply the "Ypical Dental Clinic" for the 5 years we were there.

The kids from youthgroup came back from a field trip with a picture of a sign reading "Plastic Torture is Forbidden," which was more of a discussion piece than a sign. I think it had something to do with pollution...

My favorite though, was the warning sign near a water hole in a wadi "Diving Accidents are Now Popular."

**

Hairy Krishnmas

While I was in Texas, I happened to be in the hair dye section, and there was coincidentally a sale, and I might have accidentally picked up a box of dark red coloring. This broke my (almost entire) year of fasting from dyeing my hair – but I was actually only a month early, and I gave up stuff for lent, so I figure that bought me a month.

The kids have gotten a kick out of it.

"Miss Stewart, did you dye your hair?" was shouted at me repeatedly throughout the day. I try to avoid answering redundant questions like this (I figure responses only further stunt their intelligence), so I mostly smiled and shrugged.

When nefarious Nathan came in and asked me for the millionth time, I was tired of it.

"No I didn't. Someone shot me in the head and the blood mingled into my hair and created this color."

"Eww I don't believe you!"

"It's true. My friend shot me –"

"It was your friend?"

"Well we're not friends anymore." and so on.

Daniel told me I looked like Mary Osbourne, many many times. David decided I looked like a waitress and got a kick out of calling me over.

"Hey waitress! What's 88-7?"

Vivian and Charlotte, a set of twins, were shocked. "I didn't see this coming," Charlotte said. "You look like Little Red Riding Hood."

This post is dedicated to my Emmas. To the hair stylist Emma Catherine, who left blondey bits in my hair which make me look cooler than I am. And to Emma Cole, a natural redhead who pulls it off much better. (A natural curly head too, for that matter...maybe brown contacts are in my future.)