A bit of a challenge

Well, my little school just keeps pushing along. I get to school by 6:30 each morning, and leave around 5:30 most evenings (and I still haven't figured out how to not take work home, which adds another few hours to the work day). Needless to say, I look forward to the 15 minutes set aside to sit down and eat some lunch each day.

You would think that by now I wouldn't get caught off-guard by "I can't do my homework" excuses. I have heard some great tales. This afternoon I heard a new one. As I was tutoring a student after school, I told him that I would give him some multiplication flashcards to take home to practice. He quickly told me that he couldn't.
"You can't?" I asked him with a tone that implied "that answer doesn't work for me".
"No", he said. "We don't have any lights."
With a bit of further questioning, I found that this family hasn't had electricity for a long time. They eat fast food every night for dinner because the fridge requires power to work, but they do have enough blankets to keep them warm at night.
I tried to recover quickly from the look of disbelief, sympathy, and frustration over these additional challenges that my students live with. No wonder he's lacking basic math facts. It's hard to practice at home when you are trying to do your homework by candlelight (literally. They don't have any flashlights).

I learned today that I need to "get over myself" when I feel like working 16+ hour days is hard. At least I can pull something out of the fridge for dinner, heat it up in a microwave, turn on a computer, and work until midnight by the light of a 60-watt bulb.