Class Dismissed

Since September, I've been assigned to study Farsi -- the language spoken in Iran -- in preparation for my next assignment with the State Department. We don't have an embassy in Iran, and we won't anytime soon. But you know from the news that the U.S. Government is paying a lot of attention to Iran these days so it are trying build up the number Farsi speakers it has, which brings me to the point of this blog: I'm back in school, and I dread it. Not much is more frustrating or embarrassing than trying to learn a new, difficult language and being reduced to the speech capacity of a toddler.

And just as when I was in elementary school, high school and college, if there is a reason for canceling class, then I'm all for it. We haven't had any snow in Washington this year, so other than an instructors' day at a conference, we haven't missed any time until Friday, when . . .

A construction crew excavating a site for a new building on the campus found some unexploded WWII ordnance at the site. We weren't evacuated immediately, but they let some classes in rooms overlooking the site go early, and then they wouldn't let anyone on the campus. They told the rest of us to go back to our classes, which raised the question in my mind that if it wasn't safe for people on one side of the building to be there, and it wasn't safe to let others onto the campsus, then why were the rest of being kept there. But good sense prevailed, and the rest of us were sent home shortly thereafter so that the local bomb squad could remove it.

All in all, it wasn't as good as a snow day, and I even came home and studied for another two hours so that the day wasn't a total waste.

I was probably more excited about selling 34 (EDIT: 39 woohoo!) boxes of Girl Scout cookies for my daughter.

P.S. Interestingly, during the Clinton Administration, federal employees were given "liberal leave" during inclement weather. Under the Bush Administration, that practice is now known as "Unscheduled Leave."