Spice of life

At least I can't say that I don't have any variety in my life. Yesterday I dropped my sister and son off at the pool by the beach and went to introduce the concept of "outdoor education" and team building to a group of principals from schools in Iran. It was supposed to be a 20 minute introduction, but in order to get started we had to wait for about 1 hour while they all got themselves organised. First one of them found a bike and decided to go for a ride along the road. Next half of them began their prayer session and then just as we finally got them all inside again the other half started their prayer session. They had very limited English, but had a translator with them who spoke Japanese. So I did the program in Japanese and it was fun to see a translator who is very similar to me - some of the long sentences I said he finished translating within 2 seconds. My short sentences seemed to take about a minute to relay to the group. I'm sure he was doing "selective translating" and adding his own stories - probably telling them things about a rabbit in a small white truck or something similarly unrelated, but as I do that all the time too I shouldn't complain! They seemed to enjoy the program and were all keen to come back to Japan with their students. I'm not sure how keen I am to teach their students, but we'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it!