Today is the first day of school for my children. My daughter waltzed out the door at 7 a.m. this morning after showing me the piece of cheese she was eating--(she plays soccer and I'm adamant that she eat some sort of protein), to catch her ride. She's a 10th grader.

For my son, who is now a first grader, the anticipation build-up of last year is much less. We know our routine. Kindergarten left a lump in my throat. First grade is old hat, but he still wants me to drive him and walk him in for the first day. After today, he heads out on the bus.

This first day of school got me thinking about schools around the world and what a gift having a school to go to is. When I was in the Peace Corps, I worked with my village primary school on certain days to do health education. In The Gambia, at the time, most kids did not go to school. The primary school in my village was the only one for miles around.

41-year old pastor and head of Ugandan church, Jackson Senyonga, was arrested at Oakland International Airport under the suspicion that he might have fondled the 13-year old girl seated next to him.

The religious community worker who is known to have dedicated his life to building orphanages in Kampala and heading poverty-relief initiatives, was taken to a jail in Dublin and released on bail; the case is now with the FBI.

Google Senyonga and you'll find that he is head of a Christian Life Ministry that has 40,000 registered members; there are also numerous articles written by him and podcasts to listen to. He seems like he's got a lot out there and is connected to many good causes.

The fact that he could have molested a child on a plane is reason enough to question what he stands for and all the good things he seems to be doing. It also makes you want to rethink where you choose to let your child sit on a plane.

Irrespective of the case's outcome, this is a good opportunity for the FBI to investigate this man thoroughly.

The good folks at Grist put together their own list of 15 green cities. Although their thought was probably to showcase the green efforts made by local governments and locals to make the cities more environmentally friendly, in reading it I realized it was a great list of places to chose your next eco-vacation.

If you're looking to take public transportation, play in parks and learn more about sustainability as part of your next vacation, here are the 15 cities that made the list:

1. Reykjavik, Iceland
2. Portland, OR, U.S.
3. Curitiba, Brazil
4. Malmö, Sweden
5. Vancouver, Canada
6. Copenhagen, Denmark
7. London, England
8. San Francisco, CA, USA
9. Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador
10. Sydney, Australia
11. Barcelona, Spain
12. Bogotá, Colombia
13. Bangkok, Thailand
14. Kampala, Uganda
15. Austin, TX, USA

Some of the selections surprised me; Bangkok for example, but apparently it's all about the city's strategy to make things greener. Check out the full list with accompanying explanations here.

What green cities have you visited?

As of Friday, 27 different nations had won gold medals. That means 27 different national anthems have been played in honor of the winning athletes. The New York Times put together a complete list of all 27 anthems, including lyrics, history and music files so you can sing and listen to them to your heart's content.

Here are links to five of them:

China: March of the Volunteers
USA: The Star Spangled Banner
Korea Republic: The Patriotic Song
Italy: The Song of the Italians
Germany: The Song of Germany

Click here for the complete list and the music files so you can start singing away at the next medal ceremony.

Last Thursday evening I suddenly had the urge to take the family on a short trip for the weekend. We decided to avoid flying, and also to avoid heading North to the Wisconsin Dells like most people in Chicago do this time of year.

Instead, we loaded up the family truckster and drove 300 miles east to Frankenmuth Michigan.

Frankenmuth is often referred to as "Little Bavaria", and is the only city outside Germany that has been officially sanctioned by the city of Munich as an official Oktoberfest location.

The village is about 25 miles north of Flint, so you don't get the feeling you are completely isolated from civilization. Frankenmuth is home to several tourist attractions including Bronners Christmas Wonderland, the Bavarian Inn, the Bavarian Belle and the River Place shopping center.

Frankenmuth has several hotels, but to get the "real" Bavarian experience, you really need to stay at the Bavarian Inn Lodge. This 355 room hotel has grown from a modest motor lodge, into a large resort with multiple restaurants, 5 swimming pools, shops and a massive entertainment center with the "worlds largest Bavarian themed mini golf course".

A 65-year old Indian urologist was turned over to the FBI after he tried to visit the toilet in the front of the airline.

The first time the doctor tried to use the toilet on the Southwest flight, it was occupied by the captain, so he went back to his seat. When he saw the captain come out, he got up to go again when he was pushed back into his seat by airline staff. Apparently this was because it looked like he was trying to get near the cockpit, which is against the law if the cockpit is not secure.

This was explained to the doctor, however, when the plane landed there were police waiting there for him. He was handcuffed and taken to a detention center where they took his mugshots and fingerprints. Post a night in the detention center alongside 43 other accused people, the doctor was taken to court and asked to plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and pay a fine of $2,500.

Not knowing what to do and to avoid costly court proceedings, the doctor decided to plead guilty.

How crazy and paranoiac is this whole situation!? To me it looks like an old man on his way to a medical conference in Las Vegas attempts to use the bathroom on a flight and the next thing you know he's been marked a criminal and is in court pleading guilty to an assault accusation.

Why couldn't the airline staff just request him to use another bathroom on the plane? Why all this drama? Even if it was a case of racial discrimination post 9/11, it went far beyond reason. The poor guy must be traumatized and I don't blame him.

Southwest Airlines defends how it handled the situation; they saw the old man as a potential threat because he wanted to get close to the cockpit. Excuse me, but that's where the toilet was! The airline customer service sent him a compensatory letter with a $100 voucher for the next flight he takes on Southwest.

He is suing the airline for humiliation and arrest.

Canceled flights aren't really anything to get overly excited about -- they happen pretty often -- but I think its worth noting today's cancelations on Alaska Airlines. 44 flights were canceled today between Alaska and several West Coast cities on account of a rising ash cloud from the Kasatochi volcano that erupted last week in the Aleutian islands.

Obviously volcanic ash in the air can lead to visibility problems for pilots. Even worse, debris can be ingested into the engines. Not really what you want happening in the midst of your in-flight entertainment. Travelers are obviously encouraged to check their flight status; volcanoes aren't always predictable. As airline spokesman Marianne Lindsey said, "you never know, the volcano could erupt again."

Successfully hydrating on airplanes has recently become difficult; as an adult you can no longer bring beverages aboard. And apparently even babies have the same problem, or at least it seems so after an incident concerning a mother breast-feeding her child last week on WestJet.

The Vancouver woman says that she was asked to cover up while breast-feeding during a recent flight, and that the incident has led her to consider filing a human rights complaint. After "discreetly" lifting her shirt to breastfeed her son, a flight attendant offered the woman a blanket to cover up. She declined twice, but the flight attendant insisted
"She said that some men find the sight of a bare breast quite offensive," said Ms. Tarbuck. According to the report, she wasn't even bothering the people around her; the only other people in the row were her husband and two children.

Despite what your beliefs are on breastfeeding, let me just put it this way: traveling with children is difficult, maybe we should cut these mothers some slack. Do you really want to be enduring the sounds of a hungry, crying baby during the duration of your flight???

After the issue with the wife of Joel Osteen, here comes another anger management case from the pressurized cabin.

A veteran character actor, E.D. Nixon Jr., was arrested for allegedly assaulting a flight attendant and a police officer at Memphis International Airport on Tuesday.

The 80-year-old actor, the son of a leading organizer in the Montgomery bus boycotts, is accused of striking a flight attendant on a Northwest Airlines plane and then hitting an officer.

Nixon was taken to the local hospital for treatment of high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar before being transported to jail in Memphis.

(He is being held on $1,000 bond, in case anyone is interested in bailing him out.)

Money is probably the most contaminated thing you come in contact with on a daily basis, just because of the sheer number of people whose hands it goes through every day. It carries virus's and diseases, and even traces of drugs.

Spain is known to the largest consumer of cocaine in the world, so it's of little surprise that the money circulating there has high traces of cocaine. On average, Spanish notes contain 155 micrograms of the drug. The cocaine-money exchange, along with the fact that Euro bills are used to snort the stuff, are the main contributing factors. According to a report in the BBC, Spain has over 1 billion notes in circulation, of which an estimated 142 million have been used to snort cocaine.

Apparently, it's cheap to buy cocaine in Europe (€60 a gram) because of efforts too boost production by Colombian paramilitaries who need money for weapons, and Spain is the main country through which they smuggle the drugs in. In fact, yesterday the Spanish government busted a Venezuelan-registered ship carrying 2.5 tonnes of cocaine and arrested 11 people of which 6 were Spaniards.

U.S. bills come as a close second with the notes containing an average of between 2.9 and 28.8 micrograms; however, in 1996, upto 1,300 micrograms were found on some of the bills.