Dave is a ninny. It's Saturday night and I'm home alone writing another blog entry... I should be in Recife with Rach and all the family but this morning I missed my flight to see them.

The flight was due to leave at 4.15am so I dutifully set my alarm for 2.30am to ensure maximum time to get up and drive out to be at the airport at 3.15 or so, an hour before I needed to be. I woke up at 1am when I heard noise outside. Seeing that I still had plenty of time for sleep I put my head back down and next thing I knew it was 3.35am. In a blind panic, I threw some things in a bag and raced out the door. I bombed down the main road to the airport arriving at about 3.55am. But the lady there said they had already closed the doors on the plane... As we were only going to stay until Sunday, Rach and I decided it wouldn't be worth getting another flight and so I've been enjoying a quietish weekend here. I've been able to Skype several people today, do some paperwork, watch some football, go to the cinema as well as read and pray too - the sorts of things that usually get pushed to the side in the busyness of life.

Rach and the kids were in Recife because this weekend is a national holiday. The reason I was coming down later was that I stayed in Natal to help with a spelling bee competition at the language school. Annoyingly, I lost my voice this week after a cold so I wasn't much good at the spelling bee reading out words or even judging on the panel. It went OK though, the winner being a young girl (who had negotiated the tricky word "symphony" at one point) scooping an ITouch for the top prize.

Why is it called spelling bee? Wikipedia informs us: Although its only modern usage is in spelling bee, the word bee has historically been used to describe a get-together where a specific action is being carried out, like a husking bee, a quilting bee, or an apple bee.