Last Week of the Year
All my years of teaching, I really loved the week of vacation between Christmas and New Year's. I seldom got to spend it the way I imagined that I would, but I loved that break from routine. I wanted to have some quiet time at that point and work on some art project, preferably an oil painting. That usually didn't happen.
Sometimes we went visiting our relatives during that week. But often we had people come to our home. The house would be full of activities and people and there would be no private time for art projects. But there were good times even though it was not as I'd wanted it to be.
When my husband was taking classes in counseling at Edinboro College, now University, he made good friends with some students from other countries. One was a boy from Nigeria, Pat. My husband invited him to spend New Year's with us, as well as other occasions from time to time. The New Year's occasion, Pat asked if he could bring a new friend of his, a student from Iraq, Sorub. He'd only been in U. S. for a couple days and spoke very, very little English. Of course we said yes.
At that time our church youth group stayed up all night on New Year's Eve and capped off the celebration with a pancake breakfast in the morning. They had this ridiculous trick of putting a paper napkin in one pancake and they laughed and had a lot of fun over who got that pancake. Well, wouldn't you know it! Sorub got that pancake with the napkin and since he knew nothing of this kind of nonsense, he had no idea what was wrong with his pancake and was trying politely to eat it any way. Soon the others began to realize that no one was saying they got the napkin and then they realized that Sorub was gamely eating it! They felt really bad that it happened that way. He did get a laugh out of it when they helped him understand that it was a trick and never was meant to be eaten. Now it's one of those interesting memories. Pat and Sorub finished school and returned to their countries. They kept in touch for a while but we haven't heard from either of them in years.
Syndicate this site