The spread at our Thanksgiving meal. 

My double Turkey Days....

This year was one of the first times I spent Thanksgiving away from home. At first I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to eat turkey and taters, however, I was pleasantly surprised with what I got.

On Wednesday I was headed to meet a Bible study group that I had just be invited to. It was going to be my first meeting with the group, so I was a little excited. When I arrived, I was asked, "Do you know what we're doing tonight?"

"umm....no, not really," was my reply.

"You mean, Michael didn't tell you?"

"Nope. I've been left in the dark."

At this point I was a little nervous. I wasn't sure if we were going to be singing hymns, sharing life stories or if I had to do some sort of initiation ritual, which had me a little nervous.

"We're having Thanksgiving dinner tonight!"

I was so happy that I almost jumped with joy. Not one, but TWO Thanksgiving dinners were headed my way. How can one man be so blessed?

Dinner number 2 was also great and it reminded me of the old Schurman Family reunions that we did on Thanksgiving. Everyone brought a dish (Alex made roasted a duck....a duck!!) and everyone was able to eat till their hearts were content. Around 20 people ended up coming and we had two turkeys and a duck for the main meats. It was fantastic. Good food, good people and the night ended with me in a food coma. Awesome.

My students' thrill

As I sent my students out for break today, I noticed that the sky was full of clouds, which doesn't happen too often. They looked a little darker than normal, but I figured, "Hey, it's Egypt. It never rains here," so I sent them on their merry way.

During the break I was standing near the window and I noticed a familiar smell, a scent I had almost forgotten. I took another wiff of it and then it hit me....moisture. Now I was never one of those folks that believed that you could smell rain, it just sounded silly to me, but today, I became a believer.

I walked outside 10 minutes later to pick up my kids for 5th period and suddenly all the students started yelling, screaming and jumping up and down.

"Mr. Bill! Mr. Bill! IT'S RAINING! IT'S RAINING!!"

You would have thought it was raining chocolate or $100 bills. It wasn't even a sprinkle to be honest, but they absolutely loved it.

To be honest, it's the little things that allow you to make it through the day.

My First Conference Day.....

So it has come and gone, my first conference day as a teacher. Praise God that it is finally over, but to be honest, it was not as bad as I was expecting.

I had to go in yesterday (Saturday) to have my first conference day. I was a little nervous, having to sit in my room for at least two hours and having parents come in every five minutes to chat with me about their child. It went by in a flash!

I didn't get my first parents until 10:10 and I didn't have a break until they finally kicked the last parents out of my room at 12:40. At one point parents had been waiting for an hour, just to be able to chat for five minutes. It was insane!

To be honest, I have roughly 60 students that I teach between 2nd and 3rd grade. Now, if you only have 2 hours of available conference space and every parent shows up, it's not possible to see everyone. So we rushed through as many as possible. The best part was that out of all my parents, I only had one that was a little upset. That's it! Praise the Lord that it's over!! The next one isn't until Jan, so that's even better.

My Movie Observation.....

I have recently seen two movies over here, neither of which I would consider a family flick. I saw World Trade Center a week ago and last night I went to The Departed. I'm sure many of you can imagine the fun filled scenes in WTC, but some of you may not be familiar with The Departed.

The Departed has a pretty good cast, although some of them struggle to keep their Bostonian accent throughout the movie. It deals with a couple of cops, one undercover and the other a detective, but both working for a mob leader (Jack Nicholson).

The movie was pretty good to be honest. I liked some of the characters. It had some interesting twists and ultimately I didn't see the ending coming. It really surprised me. However, the film had enough profanity that would possibly make a sailor blush and their was some graphic death scenes and killings. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with this as an adult. You can watch whatever you want, however I begin to question a parent when they bring a 2 year old child into the theater to watch a movie like this (or WTC).

REALLY?? You want your child to see this? I know that you might want a night out, but you're going to bring them to this movie? In the first few minutes alone two people are shot, execution style and you're letting your child see this? I can't imagine how your child is going to sleep at night. Honestly, lots of kids have enough trouble sleeping anyways, with nightmares, so this is only going to add to your problems.

I saw young children at both of these movies and I couldn't believe it. Unfortunately, this is not just an Egyptian thing, because it reminds me of when I saw some youngsters at King Kong in the States. I was shocked at that one too, especially when I saw the gorilla rip the dinosaurs jaws apart, then slam it into it's head.

My FEV....

I didn't realize how long it had been since I posted anything until my dad sent me an email telling me that my blog had gone stagnant. I got to thinking about it and realized that it had been a while since I posted ANYTHING at all. Sorry about that.

So, to make up for my laziness, I'll try to give you a couple of blogs in the next couple of days. Hopefully that will appease both of my readers.

I haven't even told you about my first Egyptian vacation!! During Eid, we went to a little resort village called Nuweiba, it's on the east side of the Sinai Peninsula. I had a good time, basically sitting on a beach and looking at the Red Sea for 3 days. The view was amazing, especially with the mountains and Saudi Arabia looking back at you from the other side of the Sea.

We had found this nice little Chinese place near the resort, so we ate their on the second day. The food was pretty good (much better than the fried fish I had the night before, which literally was a whole fish that had been thrown in a deep fryer--awesome). I remember that night I was talking to Alex about the next day and I said that I thought we had found a good horse here (i.e. the restaurant) and that we should "ride this horse till it bucks us". So we went back the next day for another round of tasty Chinese food.

The third day the food tasted good. I was pretty happy with my choice, some sort of chicken because the restaurant was out of shrimp. Little did I know, that in around 14 hours, the horse would buck me.

I awoke very early the next morning, not exactly feeling 100%. I beat the sun up and during my frequent trips to the bathroom, I managed to watch the sun rise over the mountains, which would have been a lot cooler if I was feeling better. My body did not like the chicken and decided to purge it from the system any way possible. This made for a very long morning, which culminated with me vomiting in the bathroom. Awesome.

I was still feeling ill the rest of the day. This made the 6 hour bus ride home absolutely miserable. The funny part about the bus ride was that they tried to show the movie Saw, a horror flick, on a bus full of families....good decision. If you've never seen it and are curious, just watch the first 20 minutes and you'll have a good idea why they shut that off.

Luckily I made it back without any more incidents, only wishing that God would either let me fall asleep or kill me on the spot. Neither of which happened.

My Joy....

Okay, brief post, it's raining, right now. It's around 6:30 am, there's a rainbow in the sky outside our porch and it's sprinkling. It's the first rain I've seen since August. Amazing.