Bring Your Child to Work Day, Embassy Style

I'v been to one Bring Your Child to Work Day before. It was when we lived in Florida and my dad was in the Air Force. I was about seven years old, and that was probably one of the funnest days of my seven-year-old life.

We had driven to the military base where my dad worked and went up to his office. All of the people in the offices nearby had come out to talk to me and bring me candy, saying I was the cutest thing, I would grow up to be just like my dad someday, stuff like that.

I barely listened, I was just looking at all of the stuff they had in their offices, candy dispensers, posters, computers, gas masks hanging on the walls, it looked like the coolest place in the world.

But finally we broke away from all of my dad's colleagues and went to his office. That was probably the best part. He had a dart board and lots of things stashed away that he did in his free time, and one of them was a little golf ball shooter. You hit the ball into the ramp, and it would go around in a U and come right back out on the other side. That was the first thing we did, and I remember it clearly.

We brought it out into the hallway and each got a golf club and took turns trying to hit it into the shooter. But there was a catch, we had to be really quiet because my dad's boss' office was right next door, so we were running all over the place to keep it from hitting walls and especially his door. But when it was my turn to hit it, I hit the golfball pretty hard, it missed the shooter and rammed right into Mr. Boss' door. We grabbed all of the stuff we had brought out, ran into my dad's office, and shut the door.

The rest of the day was spent with visits to the control tower, scanning our hands on a copying machine, and getting sodas from the vending machine. Like I said, it was one of the funnest days in my seven-year-old life.


I went four years without another Bring Your Child to Work Day, with everywhere we moved in those four years, his job changed slighty, and it just wasn't acceptable to bring your kid to work with you.

But now he works at a U.S. Embassy, and their Bring Your Child to Work Day probably beats most others.

We were given demonstrations from a lot of the offices, my dad's office did a protection demonstration, they used me as a VIP and they showed how they ushered people safely in a detail, and what they did in emergencies while they were protecting someone. When they joked about me being Hannah Montana while they were protecting me, one of the office guys ran up and tried to attack me. Getting me to safety consisted of my feet being stepped on by several people, a flip-flop being left behind, and being shoved into a bullet-proof car. All in all it went great!

The other offices did pretty cool things too, but nothing topped my dad's office, it was interactive, real, and really entertaining, especially for the kids that were then assigned to protect me, and try to copy the adults.

I would say second place has to go to the Marines. They let us play video games, where we got to shoot people. The guys in our group loved that.

Bring Your Child to Work Day here was more like a Show Your Kids What Each Office Does Day, but it was really fun, and I enjoyed it nevertheless.

Playing the Easter Bunny

Today the embassy had an Easter Egg Hunt. My mom signed me up to hide the eggs for the different age groups, and I agreed because my friend was doing it too. We started off with the 0-3 year olds, just scattering the eggs around the ground and in the bushes. There were around seven trash bags full of eggs that we had to hide for some 1 years olds, I sure hope they found them, otherwise someone would've had a lot of cleaning up to do.

The fun part didn't come until we hid the 4-7 year olds eggs though. Along with the seven bags of eggs we got to hide five "Golden Eggs." If they were found, then whoever found one got a chocolate bunny. I am proud to announce that no one found one of mine, until the whole thing was over and we gave away hints to the last few stragglers.


As kids were waiting we applied Easter tattoos to their hands, and while we were finishing up with the tattoos, everyone else hunted for their candy-filled eggs, and of course those special "Golden Eggs."

But when we finished cleaning up, there was more work to do. We had to go around making sure that each kid had ten eggs tops, and if anyone couldn't find any, we would search around and give them one. How's that for good service?

When the Egg Hunt was finally over and my friend left, I gained up with my other friends and we had the delicious brunch, but of course, I could only eat half of it, because my braces hurt when I bit something, but it was a beautiful, warm day and we stayed at the embassy long after everyone had left. Then we all went to one of our friend's houses and jumped on the trampoline, played Wii, and just had a good time.

When you live so far away from home, it's these days that you live for. Ones where everything's some what normal, and there's nothing out of the ordinary. But not only that, holidays like Christmas or Easter aren't as exciting. When you're walking you don't see houses decorated and shops full of discounts and toys, it's all normal. Christmas crept up on me like a snake, I didn't even know that is was coming up until we put up our Christmas tree, and evan then, it didn't seem real.

Easter's done that same thing. Tomorrow's Easter, and I didn't know that until yesterday. I don't know if it's living this far overseas, or just getting older, but holidays are different now.

Anyways, Happy Easter everyone. I'll try to blog about it tomorrow.

Braces Hurt

For months we've been going to the dentist, planning out my braces treatment. The day we got them was the 20th of April. Yesterday. The whole process took about 30 minutes. We got home and they didn't hurt. I went to bed and they didn't hurt. I woke up. There, right in the time of when I was half awake and half asleep, they throbbed. It felt like my teeth were slowly being pulled. That woke me right up.

I went to school with my mom saying "You can come home if it hurts to much. Just call me." But no, I'm stubborn. I wasn't going to let these metal wires on my teeth stop me from doing anything. I was going to rise above and prove to myself that I could do it.

It wasn't very hard, except for when I was taking a quiz or trying to concentrate, they didn't bother me. For lunch I sucked on spoonfuls of peanut butter and yogurt. If someone offered gum, I said no, and put my mind on something else. I love gum. It was hard, but right there were my braces stubbornly saying "Do I hurt yet?" or "Come on, take a piece, you know you want to."
But I didn't, and my first full day of braces is almost complete.

Oh yeah, I haven't even gotten the bottom ones yet. I get those three days before my birthday.

Thanks mom, it's going to be a painful introduction to my 12th year of life.

Tucker the Turtle

Today we had to do a writing assignment in Language Arts and it reminded me of a piece I wrote earlier in the year. We had to write about a thing that was precious to us, and I wrote about Tucker the Turtle.

One day, when we lived in Virginia my mom and I went walking through our town. We passed by a road and in the middle of it was a turtle just walking on by. There was a car coming so my mom dashed out on the street and grabbed him. We decided to take the turtle home and show it to my dad and brother before letting it go.

As we were walking back to the house, we would take turns carrying him. Sometimes we would put him down if there was a patch of grass and he would just hobble by next to us. When the road came again we would pick him back up.

When we got home my dad got a bin and we set him down in it, just watching him walk around in circles. My brother announced that he needed a name and we started calling the turtle Tucker.

About 30 minutes later my mom said it was time to let him go, but my brother had become attached and asked if we could keep him. We had just fixed up our backyard and it was full of strawberry, watermelon, tomato, and green bean plants. My mom did a little research on the internet on turtles in Virginia and we learned that Tucker was an Eastern Box Turtle. He lived in habitats just like our backyard and was a peaceful turtle that was easy to care for. After a short discussion with my dad, Tucker was ours.

We brought him around to our fenced in backyard and set him down. I dug a hole in the ground and stuck a shallow flower pot base in it, after just a couple of minutes, Tucker had his own pool.

Every day when I woke up, Tucker would be in our garden eating away at our strawberries, tomatoes, and green beans. Every couple of days we would set down some lettuce or cucumbers for him. But the strawberries were definately his favorite. Tucker had found lots of hiding places under bushes in our backyard, and he was always sunning himself on our patio.

One day though, we were eating dinner on our deck and I looked down at Tucker and saw that he was laying eggs. He was a she, and she was laying little baby turtle eggs in our backyard. My mom did some more research and learned that the eggs wouldn't be born for about a year.

In six months, we were moving.

Somebody was going to move into our house and they were going to be surprised when a bunch of turtle heads pop out of the ground and start eating their garden.

After we learned that Tucker was a girl we tried changing her name. We tried so many things, but in the end we always went back to Tucker, and the name stayed the same.

Six months later I cried and said good bye to Tucker. She had been a great pet, and our plants hadn't had any bugs since she had been there. We left her with lots of lettuce and opened up the gate, but she didn't move, she actually crawled away from the gate and started eating the lettuce.

We stayed in a hotel for a couple days before moving out. When we drove by our old house for the last time, the new owners came out and told us that there was a turtle in their backyard, and she wouldn't leave. We told them Tucker's story, and they said that they would be waiting for the babies. They had a two year old son, and they wanted to keep our turtle.

A day later, I was at the airport waiting for our plane. I don't know what happened to Tucker, but I hope that the baby turtles were born, and she's happy and well. I'm pretty sure I'll never see her again, but I know that we found her on that street for a reason.

We might not of gotten a single strawberry that year, but we got something so much better.

Water

Agua, Maa, it has many names, but us English speakers call it water. The stuff that we use everyday, and Jordan's running out of it. On the 13th all of the 6th graders are going to Azraq. There's a wildlife reserve, as well as a castle there and the teachers are trying to prepare us for it. They decided to do that by having us reseach 'Water Shortage in Jordan' and see what we find.

I found out that water is precious here. Most people in Jordan only get a bucket of it a week. I know that I'm in a desert and it doesn't rain much, but whenever we run out of water, we just call the embassy and they have someone hook a hose to a tank on our roof and fill it with water. Now, I can't help but think that the water we get is being taken away from someone not as fortunate.

Jordan only gets rain for around three months of the year. The rest of the year it's warm and dry, with no clouds in the sky. The rain that we get in the winter, has to last us the whole year, and we didn't get a lot of it this year.

They say that this is going to be a hard summer and we really need to cut down on the water we use, shorter showers, turning off the faucet water while you're brushing your teeth, that kind of stuff.

But there are so many bigger things that need to be done.

The Dead Sea's water level is dropping, so there are pipes leading from nearby springs, into the Dead Sea, to fill it up, but that doesn't seem to be working. All of the pipes have leaks in them, only half of the water actually ends up where it's supposed to go, and the pipes aren't being fixed.

And then there's one thing that's gotten on my nerves since we moved here. We have a boab that lives in a small house inside our garage. He carries up groceries, keeps the building nice, things like that.

He washes all the cars everyday.

No wonder we run out of water all the time, it's being used to wash perfectly clean cars everyday, and it all ends up in the street. No wonder when one day we ran out of water, and the embassy didn't have any more to bring us he stopped washing the cars. All that water was out too.

Just be thankful that you've got as much water as you need right now, and maybe you can cut down on the water you use too.

But it's going to be a long summer here in Jordan.

An American Day

Yesterday was beautiful.

It was sunny and warm, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it felt like summer. Which is coming up fast. The embassy pool opened, and there's only two months of school left. From now on, it's capris (No shorts, it's disrespectful to the culture) and T shirts (No tank tops, also disrespectful) for me.

And amazingly, I felt like I was in America. I went over to some friend's house. We Ripsticked, jumped on a trampoline, and just enjoyed the weather. No one stared at us while we screamed on the trampoline, no one started yelling at us in Arabic, it was peaceful, and unJordan like. It was perfect.

Then school came today and hit me on the head, I have officially decided in my mind that it's summer, and all thinking and homework should be banned. But I have two more months. Two more months of sunshine, and pool, and fun, that I have to miss for school. It's agony. I want them to cut the year short.

Oh please sunshine, wait for me.

The Celtic Game

Tomorrow we leave to go back to Amman. (Awwwwwww.) But honestly, I'm ready to go back. That's the weird feeling you have when you move all the time. No matter where you lived in the world, whenever you leave that place, the place with your friends, house, and school, you want to go back, months after you've left. I'm always glad to get away from Jordan when we go to America for the summer, but I miss it too. When we leave next year, I know I'm going to miss it a lot. Which amazes me since I always want to leave. But enough of this FS feeling stuff, our parents really closed up this trip well.

They took us to a Celtic game.

Football, soccer, I don't care what you call it, it was crazy! There were police everywhere. People brought in drums, were singing songs, dancing, anything to cheer on their team. I've been to baseball games before, (Go Rockies!) and was surprised to see how seriously people took soccer. The whole crowd had these serious looks on their faces, following the ball everywhere it went.

Today we decided to be lazy and just sit around the house, if I walk another step, I think my legs might fall off.

Oh yeah, Celtics won. Woo!

Edinburgh

Today we drove up to Edinburgh for the day. We had typical Scottish weather, rain scattered throughout the day, wind, and sunshine all mixed together. It was great though, everything's blooming, so flowers were all around. We walked from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood palace and back and then went into Edinburgh Castle. It was fun, it's the biggest castle we've been to so far, with lots of history and towers to explore. Colin liked playing near the cannons and pretending he was in the army while my parents and I tried to read the signs and learn about everything. Ah, little brothers.

We ended the day playing at a park right next to the castle. Every time you looked up, there it was, standing on top of it's hill all tall and mighty. It was an amazing sight.

(You know the saying: Pictures will go up when we get home.) 

Mother's Day

Turns out that Scotland has it's own Mother's Day. Just like Jordan and America. Now we have three days just for my mom. I bet she's happy.

Scotland Mother's Day was yesterday. On April 2, Dad and I were at a grocery store buying her a bouquet of flowers and some cards, when she spotted us and walked over to the cash register where we had almost escaped. She saw the huge bouquet of flowers I had in my hand and gasped. "Oops." was all she said for ruining our little surprise. But, she didn't see the cards in my hands, so I slipped them behind my back. Yesterday we presented them to her, and she was a happy mother.

Yesterday we also went to my first distillery. I've been to a ton of vineyards from living in Virginia, but never a distillery, so it was interesting. They walked us around, showed us how everything worked, and gave out whiskey tastings to the parents while Colin and I walked around the gift shop looking at everything.

Our time in Scotland is half way over, I'm going to miss all the grass when we return to the desert.

Happy April Fools

Happy April Fools Day everyone! We didn't do anything here this year, not even my dad, who is the king of pranks. Now if we were in Jordan, I would've been at the pool playing lots of practical jokes on any unfortunate friend that happened to pass my way. But here in Scotland, with only family that I've just met, I didn't celebrate April Fools like we usually do. 

Oh well, maybe when we get back I'll create my own April Fools Day, just to have some fun. You better watch out Jordan!

Anyways, it just doesn't seem like we can go one day without doing something. Something exciting. Like going through an aerial course, or going to a huge cathedral filled with graves, or exploring mines underneath a castle, or going to more castles, and palaces, and other exciting places.

Let me explain.

After we left the last B & B we drove through a little town and ended up at the Ice Factor. The biggest indoor ice climbing center in the world. But it has rock climbing and an aerial course too. An aerial course. That was enough for me to beg my parents to go. We had some spare time on our hands, and they said yes.

The aerial  course was around three stories high and consisted of many ropes, bridges, walls, and other things that tested your balance and strength. I loved every second of it. They clipped you up to a rope that was connected to a sliding pole above your head, so if you fell, you would just dangle in the air. I did everything without falling. Which was quite a feat since it was cold and raining. But that couldn't stop us, I even managed to jump and grab on to the zip line, without slipping. And your reward for doing all this? Being connected to a wooden log-like thing and being pulled up as high as possible (about three stories) and swinging back and forth. It was a lot scarier than it looked.

March 31,

Yesterday we drove into St. Andrews and visited the St. Andrews castle and cathedral. The castle was in ruins but there was one exciting feature to this one that the rest didn't have.

There were mines dug underneath it.

Townspeople in the 17th century (I think...) dug mines under the castle walls because they wanted to blow it up with gun powder. Then people in the castle dug a couter-mine and spoiled the plans.

The coolest part, you were allowed to explore them. I admit it, I was pretty scared, they were dark and narrow, slippery and wet, and there were little signs everywhere that said: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. But my dad and I explored it, and got some pretty cool pictures. (Which I will post when we're back at Amman)

Then we walked around the St. Andrews Cathedral, which was in  ruins too. There were graves all around it though, and we had a little competition to see who could find the oldest grave. Some of them were so old that you couldn't even read the writing on them, but nevertheless, my mom found one dated back to 1782. 

Lastly we went to the Old Course golf course, the place where golf was invented.

April 1,

Today we went to Stirling Castle, it was huge and very pretty, but half of the castle was blocked off for construction and the other half was unopen to the public so there wasn't much to explore.

Tiny Doune Castle is still my favorite.