Today, Traveller was involved in her very first genuine fire evacuation.
After over 20 years of being 'at school', T has participated in her fair share of fire drills.
She remembers being in primary school, in her green chequered uniform with a big green sunhat, wishing that she could go inside because the sun was hot and the concrete was hard. Not too many years after that, she remembers laying in the sun on her high school oval praying that it was a real fire so she could skip class for the rest of the day.
Now, being a teacher, fire drills are a little different. In England, she usually dreads them. Firstly, it is freezing outside. And secondly, it usually happens during an important test or one of those rare 'spare' lessons.
Today, Traveller learnt that like running drills for a half-marathon can't prepare you for the gruelling race, fire drills don't quite prepare you for an actual fire.
Firstly, the cooks left the ovens on and the beetroot boiling.
Seriously.Secondly, as fire drills never happen during that sacred time known as lunch, Traveller wasn't quite sure what to do. She was halfway through making a ham baguette and deliberated, 'Take it? Leave it?' and since she had never actually 'waited out' a fire before, she made the rookie mistake of leaving her precious morsels of food behind. After that brief moment, food became a most precious commodity that no-one seemed to have. Traveller will never forget the incredulous look on the boys' faces as they pondered leaving their plate of chicken curry and evacuating the building.
T knows how they felt.
Cut to four hours later, Traveller was sitting in a park, freezing (for there was no time to collect her coat) and famished, with nary a sandwich in sight.
The good news? No one was hurt. No school buildings were damaged. The kitchen didn't burn down. The children eventually received crisps and kitkats and the teachers returned to their lunch at around four pm.
{oh, and the sun was shining the whole time!}
