Guess who's coming to dinner?

The V.I.P tent - to which we were not invited...

Stage preparations - they even tested out the sound system with some

lovely Phil Collins music for the last hour of school.

Dubai American Academy Idol

The man himself...

Okay - not really to dinner, but that title was catchier than guess who's coming to DAA. My political views have increased tenfold since I married Nate - from an intelligence level hovering somewhere around, yes I know who the president is, to knowing who - oh dangit, I forgot their names! I was going for the guy who does Fox News Sunday - his name is Chris something, and his panel of experts, Bill something and Mara something - you get the picture. My interest level did not increase as much as Nate would have hoped, and after 4 months with no Fox News, my memories of those fascinating talking heads has disappeared. Anyhow, my post today has to do with politics - sort of - and this may be the only one to ever mention the P word.

On with my story - today, a slightly jet-lagged Bill Clinton came to my school! Sonny Varkey, the man who owns GEMS, the company who owns the school we teach in, has started a charitable education foundation for underprivileged, undereducated children around the world. Bill, in all his humanitarian glory, came to kick off the foundations big opening. There was a lot of hubbub all around school today, and all kinds of excitement. Nate and I got our free pass, and were able to snag a sitter at the last minute so we could have this once in a lifetime experience. (Well, for me. Nate has apparently already seen two sitting presidents - Bush 1 and Bush 2).

I was really surprised by the complete lack of security - it was held on the artificial soccer pitch, and as we all filed around the school towards the field, we weren't even asked for our pass, nor was anyone searched. I was also surprised by the brevity of Clinton's speech - about 10 minutes - and he got a pretty slow start. I wondered if he would ever look up from the notes on the podium, and apparently, even they weren't that helpful - he called it the Varkus Foundation instead of Varkey. But once he got into his groove and just said whatever he wanted it was interesting. Student participation came in the form of an opening number - American Idol style, with the 10 finalists from the Senior Fine Arts Vocal competition, singing a rendition of a Journey song. After all the speeches, there was a parade of nations, elementary and middle school kids from the 70 countries represented by our student body paraded onto the stage in native costume with their countries flags. Then it was over. Pretty cool experience - and nice and short - unlike this re-telling of the evening...