Dubai airport

               We are currently in the Dubai airport for the second time. It’s a wonder that reflects the wealth and imagination of this city of two cities—that of the prosperous resident and the foreign worker: here in the airport, gleaming columns support colossal brightly lit atria; an elevator the size of a bus lifts us past an indoor waterfall three stories high; and in the evening, when we arrived six or seven hours ago, a call to prayer resounded from the ceiling.

               Students are doing well. They may have watched too many movies, but some slept. Tessa was like the dead. Stella may not have slept at all. Sarah didn’t sleep the night before our trip because she was too excited, and so hopefully found some time on that first fourteen hour flight, or in the hotel, where we had sturdy beds for three hours, but also a marvelous buffet with fish curries, beet soup and rice pudding with mango.

               But the champion of this post is Coen’s neck pillow. It’s a soft cylinder painted to look like a log, with what’s supposed to look like bark on the outside and obscenely flesh-colored pink in the cross-cut. And when Coen bends his log pillow in the middle, it becomes very breasty, that’s what Polly thinks, or testicular, that's what I think. Holly D., parents, thank you for entrusting your children to us -- I'll be less childish with more sleep, I think.

               Amelia, texted me that she has arrived in her Northern Ireland homestay. Exclamation point! But we still have an hour or so here in the airport, then a ten hour flight, then a madhouse of a customs process, then what has always been at least an hour in the sun while adults leased the vans, all before we drive right away to Bellville High School, where our students will meet all the HFB students of both schools and play games under the African sun.