The Natives Are Restless

I always knew that rain was rare in Vegas, but I never fully understood how UNPREPARED this town is when it rains hard. It was pretty cloudy on my way in to school this morning so I had a feeling it was going to rain. When my kids started piling in to the classroom, I saw lightning. It's so weird because I get excited now when it rains. Not even 5 minutes after the bell rang, I heard this loud crash and it started POURING. My kids all went into a rampage and wanted to go outside to play. If it hadn't been lightning and I wasn't wearing a skirt I may have considered it. After I finally settled them down, we heard ANOTHER loud crash and I knew something was up. A short while after that, one of the other teachers popped her head in my room and said that the PA system was down in the school. No big deal. 10:00 comes around and I started to take my kids to Art, when I was then told that the outside building and the portables were all evacuated and since the art room was in the outside building, it had been cancelled. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but I had a ton of crap to do during prep so I was pissed. Thankfully all of the 5th grade was watching a movie in the open area by my room and offered to let my kids watch it while I did some stuff in my room. I later found out that something blew the circuits outside and everything in the outside building and portables was going haywire. The fire alarm outside was going off forever. Shortly after lunch, the fire alarm in the main building goes off and all of the kids immediately pile outside. I couldn't believe that they were doing a fire drill on a day like this. As soon as we walked outside, I realized that it was STILL raining. So naturally the kids started going nuts AGAIN and then the office staff walked outside screaming to go back into the classrooms and that they were just testing the system. 5 minutes later the same thing happens again so we all pile outside again only to be told the same thing. Can't be too careful! I was so pissed off by the end of the day that I didn't think anything else could happen to piss me off more. Well it did. Stupid people from the county came in to try and fix the PA system and in the meantime they checked the system over the loud speaker every 5 seconds for 45 minutes. I was trying to keep my kids calm by reading to them but it was impossible with that kind of interruption. This was seriously the worst day I've ever had teaching. I can't get upset with the kids because I don't blame them at all for getting excited about the rain. But trying to keep control of 25 CRAZY kids is a tough job. I really hope tomorrow is a better day or I'm going to rip my hair out.