The Calgary Tower, Vertigo Theatre and Team Building

I am rather groggy this morning, I got home at 11:20 p.m. and up at 4;00 but I confess I hit the snooze for 10 minutes before getting up. Then I ate a dozy breakfast, what did I eat? Right, toast with cheese and coffee. We had a terrific teambuilding session yesterday though where we merely socialized, which I think are the best ways of learning to know people. I could tell everyone was enjoying themselves because there was such a terrific buzz of conversation in the tables behind me and my own table was pretty talkative as well.

We enjoyed a really fabulous three course meal at the Sky360 in the Calgary Tower and Mother Nature was kind to us. We had a spectacular view as the restaurant moved around in its circle before the fog started to roll in. The service was perfect and we had plenty of time to walk next door to the Vertigo Theatre to hang up our coats in our own private room and then take our seats before the play started. The play was Agatha Christie’s “and Then There Were None”. It was well done, I was very impressed with the sets, the acting and the great laughs they managed to pull out of a murder mystery. It was nearly 10 before we headed out to find a cab which took less than no time. I hope my friend Jane got her cab right after ours. She was noble and allowed us to get the first cab because we had so much farther to go than her living downtown as she does. So we were off to the C-train station for the next leg of the journey.

On the way home my nephew Christopher, who was my date, told me more about his horrific day on the job as a high school teacher. Poor lad had his first really serious experience dealing with a Grade 10 student high on drugs and another student who decided he was unfair to her for punishing her, “the angelic one in a class of rowdies”. He had handled it quite well he thought, as did his TA, but when we were almost at my car he began to talk about a second career. I was concerned for him but he said he was “just venting”. High school is not for the faint of heart but Christopher isn’t the faint of heart. I felt sorry for him having to experience this in his second week of high school. This is just his practicum but he is getting baptism by fire as they say.

I have the utmost confidence this Christopher will succeed in his chosen field, his dream since grade 2, but I wish I could make some of the nastiness go away for him. So sad to see students in their first year of high school already destroying their lives. I hope that Christopher, once he is a certified teacher, will make a difference to many of them and get them back on track and into meaningful lives. If anyone can, it will be Christopher. This is not a job to him, it’s a passion. Eventually the students will see that. Meanwhile, I am glad that I was able to top up his day with having him be my date since it gave him the opportunity to watch his favorite Agatha!