Goofrey's Birthday

I shouldn't find this as funny as I do

I had way too much sugar today.

It started this morning when our assisstant headmistress sent our office a very nice yule log from the Mandarin Oriental bakery as a Christmas present.

On top of that, today is our boss's birthday. Geoffrey, our fearless leader, always makes a big deal about other peoples' birthdays; he is always dragging us around the school to sing to teachers or administrators we don't really know. We wanted to do something nice for him today, too.

We prepared while he was proctoring his exams this morning. We have a lot of midterm exams to grade right now, so naturally we took as much time as we could to distract ourselves from actual work. The Thai teachers brought him a cake, and Ryan, James, Kate, and I made cards (we had forgotten to buy an actual card at the store).







The cards were mostly references to some of Geoffrey's stock sayings, notable "British is best", and referencing America as the "wrong side of the Atlantic". He likes to tell the story of how a student once spelt his name "Goofrey", which is a nickname we have adopted to calling him whenever he is acting goofy. Ryan addressed his card to "Goofrey". We made do with our old black-and-white printer and some Union Flag-colored markers.

"that's true" he said when he read my card

Enlisting the help of our top M6 student, who rounded up twenty or so of her classmates, we snuck into the lunchroom while Geoffrey was getting his lunch from the buffet. Somehow, this giant group of students stayed quiet waiting until he turned around, at which point they burst into "happy birthday", and we gave Geoffrey his cake and cards. I'm very impressed with how well that went! They are great kids, and they really made it special.

In the afternoon Suzie came by to pick up her midterms and help me write a rubric for our M6 writing class. She brought cupcakes for Geoffrey too. Suzie is great because she often brings delicious baked goods to our office. It makes the holidays feel a little bit more like being at home.