palms up sunday

The Filipinos sat all around me making crosses with the palms they had been given.  A woman to my left saw me admiring her handiwork and motioned to me asking if I wanted my palm transfigured, no, thank you.  Such are the island people on Palm Sunday at St. Mary’s church this evening.  Playful, devoted and quick to make the cross. 

I hadn’t planned to cross the border for Mass but a colleague kind of left me feeling obligated, my excuses for not going the last few Fridays were quite lame and I remembered this day of my youth and was glad I went.  The reading of Mark’s account of Jesus and his last meal with his beloved followers until the moment he is taken down and placed in the cave is still moving.

Temperatures are going up tomorrow into the triple digits.  Welcome to the fourth season.  Today’s unruly students said there are two seasons in Al Buraimi.  I said there were four and this one is called ‘really really really hot.’  And I noticed unfortunately the temps while I ran around between classes and afterwards to get my new auto insurance which for a year cost me $250.  A headache behind the eye grew as I waited in the bank where I bought the insurance and it grew.  It didn’t help at all that the students were in an unwilling to learn frame of thinking.  And even now, close to nine pm, it lingers.

So tomorrow I will take the 13 year old car with its occasionally squeaky brakes to have it inspected at the main police station at seven in the morning.  If all goes well and they overlook the driver’s window that doesn’t go down completely, or the right side mirror that doesn’t move very much, I’ll get the new registration and return to the office.  A colleague will take my classes.  Om mani padme hom, Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The end of the month, rising thermometers, it’s all according to plan.  It is hard to see global warming having an effect here.  If things got really hot, like 150, that would be downright scary.  I wonder how the a/c’s would cope with that.  Let’s hope that never happens because a lot of people would die and the first to go would be the laborers. 

Well, when Bach becomes a woman yodeling opera it’s time to turn it off and listen to Michael Card.  So, is that all tonight?  I’m not exactly ready tomorrow but it will be a half day of sorts.  I have all kinds of prep to do I just can’t afford to get headaches, drink water, drink lots of it even if it means loo stops every hour.