The King Declares A Random Day Off For Schools

I should be at school right now.  It was supposed to be a special day at school for National Day celebrations.  I was supposed to take the 12th grade class on a trip to the Bahrain Stock Exchange.  So why no school?  I was at a friends' house last night at about 6 o'clock and he got a call from a friend.  This friend told him that school was canceled - by the king, no less!  She didn't know why, but school was cancelled.  I called my vice principal later to confirm, and she said yes.  And so here I sit at 7:45am while Eva plays with my keys and I write a blog post.

There are two observations I'd like to make about this:

1.  "Random" Days Off:  Since I have lived in Bahrain, this happened once before when a leader of the UAE (?) died a couple years ago.  This time its for a National Day Celebration.  Either way, we find out the day before, and we are pleasantly surprised with a day off.   No warning at all.  Frustrating?  Initially, but after a while you just get used to things like this.  I've learned that I can't plan too far in advance at school, for inevitably something happens (like today) that completely messes with what I wanted to do.  So you just learn to go with the flow.

2.  Spreading the Word:  This mystifies me even more - how an announcement can be made literally 12 hours before school starts and the entire country now knows.  In fact, I would venture to guess that 75% of the country knew in the first hour.  I imagine it was announced on radio stations (which I don't listen to) and local news stations (which - not knowing Arabic - I never watch).

But beyond that, its just expected that everyone will hear about it in time.  And, in general, most people do.  And that's the part that amazes me.  Word spreads like wild-fire.  And I know that, as an expat, I'm relatively out of the loop.  So if I know about things so fast, you know that word spreads 10 times faster among Bahrainis.