THE ALARM CLOCK

Last night one of the Vietnamese students politely asked me if I could wake him at 7:30 this morning because they did not bring an alarm clock. That's not too much of a problem since I have to leave my house at 8:30 to substitute every day this week. And it makes me fondly remember my days in Spain last year when my host father would knock on my door every morning at about 7:30am. BAM BAM! Two loud knocks and that was it.

So this morning I quietly open the door to the room and loudly whisper "Hey! Get up!" I am loudly whispering because there is a third sleeping student in the room, Daniel. He's from Switzerland (the German part). Neither of the Vietnamese move an inch. And the student on the top bunk is sleeping in his clothes! He's still got on his jeans and buttoned-up collared shirt (still tucked-in, I presume). So I come closer and tap the one on the bottom bunk. He seems to be the leader of the two, and I figure I just need to wake up one of them to take care of both. Tapping doesn't work. I shake him. Actually grip his shoulder and shake him. Is he dead? I cannot fathom ever sleeping that hard. He is more motionless than a sleeping rock. After speaking, tapping, shaking, and finally removing the pillow from beneath his head, I give up. I begin to think he must be awake and is simply letting me know silently that he wants to keep on sleeping. Fine.

At 8:10 while I am having breakfast the two are still sleeping. I decided to give it one last effort and I enter the room again. The pillow is still at the kid's feet and he is still in his coma. So I try the top bunk. This student wakes up after a rousing shake on the shoulder and so I go back to the kitchen. I kid you not, about 15 seconds later I hear the most incredible shaking of the bed you could possibly imagine. It was like a magnitude 8 earthquake visited the back-left room of my house. At first I thought the top-bunk student was just climbing down and being really noisy, but then I realized that he was shaking his companion from the depths of unconsciousness for about 5 good long seconds.

Apparently that worked, because 10 minutes later they were out the door into a sun-filled world of English and big cars.