It’s nearly 10pm and I can’t sleep. While I know there are a thousand opportunities for things to go wrong, I’m beyond excited to think that tomorrow night, I’ll be picking up my BFF from Cairo Airport!

In addition to that phenomenal news (though, like I said, I’m trying not to get my hopes up), I had quite a lovely day today.

I didn’t think it was going to be as pleasant as it was. Waking up at 5am can be a drag, and I had to force myself to stumble out of bed and downstairs this morning. If I didn’t run with Ian in the mornings, I don’t think I’d be running at all. As we ran, we began talking about dancing.

“I’m sure you know a bit about dance, with all the line dancing you do.” Ian may have said.

“Line dancing?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that what you do in America? I just picture you all taking to the streets and line dancing.”

“Yes, with our ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots.”

“Exactly.”

“No. I like line dancing, but I’m scorned for it.”

Later, he mentioned a different form of dancing.

“That’s like the bon dance. That other dance you’re famous for.”

“The what dance?”

“The bon dance.”

“Bond dance? Bon dance?”

“Bon dance.”

“Like…a bonfire?”

“Bon. B-a-r-n. What, do I need subtitles now?”

At this point, I was laughing too hard to move forward and had to amble on in hysterics. I’m not sure if it was his British accent obscuring the word or the image of millions of Americans casually gathering for a hoedown in a barn on the weekends, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Bon isn’t even a word,” he added smugly.

It takes a lot to make me laugh at 5:30 in the morning, so my day was off to a good start with that. My schedule is marathon-like on Sundays, so it was a long day, but I didn’t mind.

Susannah and I have been doing a spelling bee with our students and we’ve really enjoyed it. For some reason, the students often panic while spelling a word and begin frantically sputtering any letters at all that arbitrarily come into their mind. Most of the time, I can keep a straight face, but sometimes I have to struggle to keep from bursting out laughing. They’ll start off just fine, but somewhere between the first and second syllable, they go haywire.

I’m not exaggerating, here.

“Your word is ‘attorney.'”

“Attorney. A-t-t-u” cue look of sheer panic “o-h-e-h-r-n-i-y” pause, scrunched forehead “e.”

And that’s not even the worst. H’s and e’s seem to roam freely throughout the English language and can be silent, pronounced, or even metamorphic in their ability to change how they sound. But the completely random grasping for letters can be humorous.

As Susannah put it today, “1 in 26 chance! 1 in 26!”

The day ended at the BCA watching rugby again, and then I hopped off to Alpha Mart to buy a towel for Shar, among other things. But I’m not even sure I bought a towel. It looked like one on the shelf, but when I brought it to the checkout it looked more like a tablecloth and the man said, “Just one?” as if it were part of a pair or something. At least it’ll keep her dry.

Off to tackle sleep, perhaps.