This week, I’ve been doing a story with my 6th graders about a school play appropriately titled “The School Play.” In addition to that, my 6th graders have been asked to do a play during the “morning broadcast,” and they’ve chosen the topic of bad/good behavior and consequences. They perform tomorrow, inshallah.

Yesterday’s play during the morning broadcast was a somewhat frightening ordeal that put the subject of “The School Play” to shame. (“The School Play” is about a class performing a play about the Donner party. Try explaining to 18 6th graders that yes, they ate each other and yes, it’s a true story.) But no, yesterday morning’s play made the Donner party look like a misguided road trip that was nothing to write home about.

To celebrate the 6th of October, some children – they may have been in 2nd or 3rd grade at most – emerged with some very realistic looking guns and proceeded to act out the surprise attack on Israeli troops in Sinai during Yom Kippur. They happily rounded up the “Israeli soldiers” and forced them to their knees at gunpoint, smiling all the while. I honestly expected them to mime gunshots, but instead they took a less outwardly violent route and crumpled up what was supposed to be a loose-leaf drawing of the Israeli flag, replacing it with a shiny Egyptian one. The actors bowed, their military regalia in hand, and were met with wild applause from the audience and a few compliments from the director. I was waiting for some German shepherds to be brought out and strangled next, but luckily that did not occur. Between the play and the school’s strict policy of monitoring – there is a clause that Susannah and I call the 1984 clause, which allows the school to monitor you and prohibits negative conversation about the school inside the school – I sometimes feel like I’m stuck in an Orwellian novel or a production of Au revoir les enfants.

I then accompanied the kids to MUN at the nearby college campus. The MUN kids are sweet, though a bit hyperactive at times. We ate, I sent them off to their respective councils, and then I spent two hours writing my prospective book. Begun in July, it now fills an entire notebook and is spilling over into a new one. I finished the climax at the campus McDonald’s last night.

We then took the bus home and picked up some students from a different school who had missed their bus. While my 9th grade MUN-ers entertained themselves obnoxiously in the back by shouting and making humming sounds, I got to converse with some seniors from the other school, where most of my friends teach. I miss upperclassmen, specifically mature upperclassmen.

All in all, a good night.

Have I mentioned I found pumpkins at the market down the street? Do I need to say how stoked I am about this?