It's time like these that makes one regret having to be associated with the individual or in this case individuals responsible for such a mess....I didn't think it was appropriate to take the kids on a field trip to the airport in the first place. It's not like the place is an airplane museum where one can say ok they'll see many differnet types of planes and learn about the history of planes and flying blah blah blah. No this was an "airport" and ha not just any airport but the busiest one in the U.A.E.
I thought myself lucky to have escaped going with 3B1 (there are two grade 3 classes, I teach english and science to both) on Wednesday. I should have known better since I'd been having a streak of ironic luck all this week. Then as soon as I walked in on Thursday the principal asks me if I could go with 3B2 (u know the kind of question that it is expected of u to answer yes. I wasn't in the mood to find out what might have happened if I refused.).
The kids were really excited. It was nice to see, but I knew I'd regret it. We were given a tour of most of the airport (no special behind the scenes places just a normal walk around the airport and simple Q & A about planes). My shoulder wanted to drop off (I hadn't been expecting to go on that trip and I had brought my laptop to school. I need not say I sure wasn't going to be leaving my precious Lt in that cursed place!) and the kids were complaining hunger by the time the tour was over. So we took them to the Mc Donalds inside the airport. Big mistake.
Firstly it was in a small food court that had Mc Donalds and some high class cafe. The tables and seats near the Mc Donalds were full. Only some seats and tables on the side of Mc D but infront of the cafe were available. We sat the kids there and collected extra chairs from tables that only had one or two ppl seated at them. The teachers in that school always prefer to collect the kids money and ask them what they want as opposed to splitting up the kids- like say 4 or 5 kids per teacher - and letting each kid order what they want. Their way, those teachers always end up forgetting who ordered what and how much money was given to them by whom and the change. In other words food time is bedlam. They left me to watch all the kids (I think it was 12 or 14 kids) while they did the ordering - which was fine with me cuz I wanted no parts of forgetting orders, the right change and so on.
Anyways their first trip they came back with one lone tray with 2 kids meals and placed it on the already crowded table (12 kids seated around a table that was no bigger than a student's school desk, and a few kids brought their lunch boxes and had them on the table. Some had dropped their jackets on the table.). So two kids got and the other kids were getting uppity cuz they wanted theirs also. Darn kids meals came with toys of course so all the kids wanted to play with those two toys and next thing we all new the whole tray with fries and their drinks went crashing to the floor (The tray got kicked all the way under the table by the time I took that pic). All eyes from the surrounding tables turned. Frowns and disapproving looks were bestowed upon us (the other teachers were at the Mc D ordering so the kids and I were graced with it all). It was one of those moments when one sends very sincere mental pleas to the ground begging it to open up... I think we stayed there all of 15 minutes and when we were leaving that's when the clean up staff finally noticed the mess and began to clean it up.
E-M-B-A-R-R-A-S-I-N-G
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