Les Hannah, day 12, part 1

I began this morning as I have the others so far, the typical morning routine, even when I am home. I know I did not get into bicycle shape this fast, but the ride into Esbjerg did not seem as laborious this morning. I know what it was; the wind was not as high. That head wind sure makes a difference.

Today was a bit different from the previous days; apparently once per week this school has an assembly wherein all students, faculty, and most of the staff gather in what Americans call the gymnasium (here that word has a totally different meaning) and listen to announcements from the faculty and administrators. I was asked yesterday by the deputy director if I would speak at the assembly and give a brief introduction of myself and tell everyone where I am from and a slight bit about myself. Of course I agreed. The first period of the day I was off; I did not have a scheduled class to speak before, so I sat in my office working on a few things. The assembly was during the first few minutes of the second period. It lasted about thirty minutes, and I was the final item of the agenda. I was introduced to the approximately 600 people in the gym by the director of the school.

I said only a few words, my name, where I was from, mentioned the Fulbright assignment, and that was about it before the the director broke in and announced that yesterday was my birthday. I was hoping I could get away with it, but not so. Only one person mentioned anything to me about it yesterday; one class wished me happy birthday the day before because they would not be seeing me again for a while. The teacher of that class friended me on Facebook about a month before I arrived here, so she knew from my postings there. But I never expected anything like what happened next. The entire school sang Happy Birthday to me.

So, I tried to follow that act by resuming my little introduction of self. I pulled up my Facebook page to show some photos; I opened the NSU home page and told a bit about it and the history of the university. I also showed them on Google Maps where it all is: Oklahoma, Tahlequah, NSU. I took all of ten minutes to give the brief who, what, where story, and the assembly was over. From there I followed one of the English teachers to the final forty-five minutes of her class.