I often find myself playing the game “If you had told me five years ago that I would __________ I would have _________.” You fill in the first blank with details about your life and then the second blank with some sort of surprised action (I would have literally lit you on fire, I would have slapped you in the face and called you Susan, I would have puked all over myself then stopped dropped and rolled etc). I have had tons of statements to fill in the first blank since I moved here last August….

• be a Calculus and Physics teacher
• live in Jordan
• speak decent Arabic
• have a receding hair line
• spend $50 on a grade book program because I know enough to prefer one grade book to another
• have a bank account in a foreign currency
• go camping with…

Well, I have a new one to add. If you had told me five years ago that I would own a lab coat with my name embroidered on it I would have said, well butter my butt and call me biscuit. My department head in the science department is a phenomenal guy, and loves doing things to bring us together as a department. The latest has been to order lab coats for the entire department embroidered with our names – two for each person. So I own two of these.

Even though I typed this before you read it, I can practically taste your jealousy as you read this, even from 9,000 miles away.