Day 5 - Kuwait

The alarm went off at 5:00am this morning. I turned it off, rolled over and when I sat up in bed it was 6:15am. So much for breakfast! I quickly dressed, grabbed my bag and dashed off to the car for the drive into work. Twenty-five minutes later I was in the parking lot catching a ride through the gate to the classroom building. I stopped on the way and grabbed a breakfast sandwich from a fast food place. No fresh pineapple today...

The students seemed rather tired today, so I gave them an extra break or two throughout the day. Having slept in myself I was in no mood to criticize. But if they were caught napping in my classroom they would have gotten into a boatload of trouble. It's what their employer calls "dereliction of duty." I'm here to help students, not to bust them so I made sure that if any of them were starting to check out the inside of their eyelids, we'd all take a quick stretch break.

At lunch I was not sufficiently motivated to forage for a full meal. Again, the heat evaporated any sense of hunger I might have had. So I once again settled on a smoothie consisting of strawberries, kiwi and banana. Not much for a big fellow like me, but there is something I'm trying to leave behind here in the desert - the pillow on which my belly button resides. After a routine afternoon I headed back to my car, made the drive back to town, grabbed some dinner and ate up in my hotel room.

After dinner I called home to check in. The kids wanted to video phone so they headed downstairs and we had so much fun spending the next 75 minutes looking at each other and talking. Well, sort of talking - they could hear me but I couldn't hear them. I talked and they typed, all the while looking at each other. Jeaumanneh asked for a tour of my room and a look out my window, and they got to see the date palms full of fruit. To keep too many dates from falling to the ground the gardeners put up netting around the date clusters. Brilliant, I thought to myself. I'll have my brother's gardener do that. When I was at his house last Friday I stepped on a ripe date and it stuck in my sandal like, well, uh, mud.

I was going to hit that pickup basketball game again for some exercise, but after the lengthy phone call I decided to stay in and call it an early night. Besides, I have some reading I need to finish tonight so I can stay on track to finish my coursework while I'm out here.

So just another day at the office, 6500 miles from home. But what made this different is that for the first time I felt like I was playing with my kids and enjoying the time with them. The time we spent, however short it was, refreshed me. Suddenly it didn't seem like I was so far away. Samuel found a teddy bear icon in the chat tool. And he and his siblings kept sending it to me. I finally said, "What's with the teddy bears?" And as my mouse hovered over the bear, the text shortcut appeared: (hug). And all I wanted to do is reach out and hug them all.

I think that God feels the same way. We pray and read the Bible, his love letter to us. And that's as close as we can get to him. But he sits in Heaven thinking to himself, "I can't wait for my children to come home!" Can you imagine what kind of a hug is waiting for us in Heaven from a God who loves perfectly?

Hug your kids tonight. If you don't have any, hug somebody else's. But be sure to get parental permission to do so. :-)

Warmly,
Khalaf.

Popular posts from this blog

Smoot Marks

Light a Candle

Royal Oak, MI - A Profile in Courage and Sportsmanship