Puddle Jumping, Dinners, and Shiny Things

Hello!

Once again this post is late because my life is quite boring. The highlights are these: a get-together at a fancy hotel, shiny new things in my classroom, drama club auditions, and a Thanksgiving feast.

The get-together was held at a building called The Butterfly just down the road from where our apartments are. We had been told there would be some activities to do like swimming and bowling and we would also get food. So, we decided to walk there in groups and, once we got there, found out that the building’s bowling lanes, swimming pools, and movie theatre were closed to the guests for our party-pretty cool! There was about 30-40 of us that attended and the lady hosting it was really awesome. From what I understand, she used to work as the secretary for one of the owners of the building and has now retired but is still very much connected to MKS. She was also one who hired a majority of the first year teachers and I met her at the UNI Fair, but I honestly don’t remember seeing her or anything. Anyways, she gave me a few insights as to what to do with the drama club ticket rules. When I was out and about doing activities, I was bowling for like 3 hours, playing air hockey, darts, pool, and foosball for maybe a total of an hour, eating for about an hour (gotta make sure to eat all the free food I can) and then swimming in the indoor pool with about 15 other people for maybe 3.5 hours. There was quite a bit going on but the only things I did not do was go to see the movie theatre or swim in the outdoor pool—that thing was freezing.

For my classroom, there’s a revamp kinda going on right now. I now have 10 broken chairs in my room so I was told that I basically had to hide these 30 chairs (there’s one chair broken in every attached group of three) because one of the owners might walk into my room and the other owner didn’t want her to see. At least that’s what I was told. So, to “hide” these broken chairs, I pushed them all against one wall and then let the kids design the rest of the chairs in front of the stage and along the wall. I also received a desk, chair and filing cabinet which I now have in the back of the room. Not only is all of that, but the last thing some kids are doing is to work on re-designing a wall that everyone participated in. Quite a bit of the work they did was taken down but the ones that were really creative or colorful were kept up but now are being changed slightly to make them stand out even more.

Last week Kate and I had auditions for the drama club play in March. We had a majority of the turnout be from drama club-which is awesome-and a few from my classes. There were very few that showed up that I didn’t know. Now that I’ve held auditions, I have to cast…well, I can’t get the money for the script until Monday at the earliest so I get to fend off kids in the meantime. Also, signups for the London trip were last week and I got information from 4 kids but I need at least 20 to go on this trip. Since it all has to be done by the end of November, I’m holding on to the papers until the end of the day today, Sunday, and then turning it in after school. However, I highly doubt we will get at least 16 other signups in one day so it looks like the trip will not happen this year.

On Friday-the day after everyone else’s Thanksgiving-the apartment building I live in had a huge dinner where everyone cooked and/or brought something to the feast. It was an awesome meal but I missed my ham this year L There was sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, turkey, green bean casserole, candied bacon, pies, asparagus and carrots, etc. There was lots and only about half was eaten…but it was still really good to celebrate and stuff our faces even away from America. I personally made Christmas Crack, well, the Bahraini version (some ingredients aren’t in this country) but it still turned out really good and the people that did try it really liked it-most people were so stuffed from the meal they couldn’t even try. I still have a ton left but I plan on sharing with some co-workers at school as well as some of my friends from the apartment building. When I first stated that I would make Christmas Crack for the dinner, no one believed me so when there was a spreadsheet made of who was making what and I wasn’t there, I said it again. Apparently, no one thought Christmas Crack was a thing, and if it was, it wasn’t something we wanted as teachers or at a private event.

I forgot to mention earlier that there was a lot of rain here in Bahrain last week…there was like 3 days of rain and it was crazy! I thought that the world was coming to an end because there was so much rain off and on throughout the days. It ended up that total, there was probably a foot of water over the course of 3 days. What we didn’t know coming in, is that streets get flooded very easily because there is no drainage system in place…so all the water just collects in giant puddles in the roads and dirt lots. On the way to school on the 2^nd morning, we basically drove through a couple rivers. There were a few spots we managed to avoid where the water was above the curb of the road and we never flooded our engine! Some of my kids were so convinced school would be cancelled because of how much rain we were going to get but they were wrong-we had school like normal. There was just a lot less kids that showed up whether because they couldn’t or didn’t want to. Anyways, Saudi Arabia did apparently cancel school one day last week because they got way more rain than we did, maybe another foot or so from what my kids have told me.

On a side note, the guys were offended that I didn't call them by name in my last post. So, I've been hanging out with Michael, Morgan and Leon on the roof and exploring places. There. You guys happy?!? So now I’ll end it here. I’ll post once more before I leave for Christmas break on December 11^th but don’t expect to hear from me until another month after that…I’m going home for Christmas!

Sitting And Waiting for Something Magical...

Hey! Sorry this is late!

Today I am coming to you live from parent-teacher conferences. Literally. I have very little to do and 8 hours to do it. Anyways, since you last heard from me I have not done much. I put in grades and double-checked them. Then, of course, I find out the day after quarter ends that about ¼ of them are wrong because a tardy penalty didn’t save. So basically, some grades weren’t as low as they should have been. Anyways, I’ve done all I could to help that and apparently some did not save because parents are coming in with either complaints or praises when it should be the opposite. There’s not too much new again this week but I did find out that the London trip has been re-approved (had to send in the information again two weeks ago) and that I can start student signups which are actually all of next week. I also found out that a lot of the information I’ve brought to the vice principal and dean of the school-when it comes to students-is being completely backed up or handled with efficiently. Even some of the things we brought to the attention of one of the owners of the school seems to have been heard and hopefully answered soon. Outside of classes, drama club has their auditions for the play coming up next week so I think I’ll be getting pretty busy with that. Also I found out that the auditorium they are building will not be ready this year so we will have to perform in the elementary school but only for students—which is something I don’t quite understand for the play. I’m going to have to see what I can do about that.

Outside of work, I have mostly been spending my time doing whatever I want. I have up until Christmas planned day by day so I’ve been able to hangout a little bit more with random people and I quite enjoy taking time off. This past weekend I travelled with a few guys and went to the Hidd Bridge in Bahrain which gives you a very nice view of the city skyline and there was also a park we stumbled across which would be an awesome place for a night picnic. Or even just to people watch because it is a very big place where families spend their time on the weekends. We then went back to the roof of the apartment where there was a grill so we made kabobs and s’mores J
The day after, I went with the guys again to the mall to do a little bit of shopping both for clothes and apartment stuff. Shockingly, I was the one done first. While we were driving back, we decided to do a little bit of exploring and went on the bridge that crosses the ocean to Saudi Arabia. We only went to the checkpoint, which is actually closer to Bahrain then Saudi, but it was about a 15 minute drive just on the bridge. When we got to the checkpoint, we saw a McDonald’s so we stopped off to get a few pictures and explore. We couldn’t do too much, though, as the actual Saudi entrance part of the bridge was there too.
After that, nothing too much happened this past week. Last night Kay and the guys (again) went to a restaurant called Mohamed Noor’s which serves Middle Eastern food. We got the full experience of a typical meal here because not only was it cooked with their spices and ways, but we had to remove our shoes, sit on the carpeted floor, and eat with our hands…it was actually really cool! We went to the souq after eating because Kay had to pick up some Christmas presents from there. In the end, we wandered around for a couple hours and I bought two soccer jerseys for myself. And some snacks of course.

Like I said, I’m now sitting here at conferences and enjoying 8 hours of nothing but sitting on my butt. But (haha, butt but) thankfully it’s almost done. I really only had one parent come and argue about their child and one make some excuses for her daughter but I’ve come to expect that after what everyone has been saying all week. Tomorrow night there will be a party at a fancy hotel and we’ve all been invited so we shall see how that goes. Anyways, I’ve got a few things to do before I have to leave school so I will sign off! Here’s a picture of me and the sea lion, just because.

Racing in That Speedy Style

What up everyone?

So once again there hasn’t been much going on at all and I expect this post to be even shorter than the last one. I finished out last week with working and getting things ready for school--as usual--before we went go-karting for a friend’s birthday. It was really awesome because we were able to go up to 40mph on the racetrack and we all felt completely safe! We had to sign a waiver and stuff obviously but it was so worth the money we paid and for the amount of time we went (30 minutes). There was a group of about 10 of us and majority of us were just driving to have fun. Of course, my competitive-self wanted to go as fast as possible and see how many times I could pass everyone else and what my fastest time could be. After the first round, two people went to go watch us in the next round from a viewing box above—one of those people had never driven anything in her life before that day. That would be why she drove like 2mph the entire first couple laps.

Anyways, by the next round some of us had figured out how to drift the cars so we started doing that on every corner to avoid slowing down too much. This was more of a friendly competition just to have fun but it wasn’t too serious. We were also racing with some Bahrainis and they knew what they were doing so we didn’t even bother with them. At the end, we saw the results and Birthday Boy had a best lap time of 1:24.794. He was talking with his roommate about how he had the best lap time of our group. Then his roommate looked at me and says, “Weren’t you Lollipop?” (it showed our nicknames we chose, not our names). Yup. I was Lollipop. I wasn’t going to say anything but I beat Mohamed. I had a best lap time of 1:24.468. Barely beat him.

Afterwards we all went to a restaurant called Veranda’s that serves some of the biggest varieties of food at any place I know from Chinese to Homestyle Southern to Indian to Bahraini to Mexican. Awesome place. Mohamed got a fruit cake served to him and we all got a slice-which was amazing. Other than Mohamed’s birthday, the week has been a big drag. A few of us got together to watch V for Vendetta on November 6^th because we were too tired after go-karting and eating to watch it on the 5^th.

In other news…there is no other news. Classes were this week. Like every week. Grades were due. Like they’re always due. 1^st quarter ended today. That’s exciting, right? All the kids approach you asking you to give them an A. And/Or complain that they have a low grade or that you didn’t do your job right. That’s why I have a new sign going on my door J Can’t wait for conferences to be over so then I can just concentrate on teaching again.

That’s all for now, see ya on the flip side!

Can We Say the Bad Word NOW?

^My favorite quote from a movie (you'll find out soon which one). Soooooo….I’m planning on this post to be very short. There hasn’t been much to happen in the last week. The rest of school last week was uneventful. For the most part kids were good in class and the week passed without much of a hitch.

I'm on the far right,
but don't forget to look at the floor...

This weekend we held two parties in the apartments. The first one was just to hang out with friends and it was. I got to see a lot of people I feel like I haven’t seen in a while due to travelling and being busy at school. At this one we played a game similar to the game called True American on the show New Girl. It was quite challenging and really hard to remember all the rules. Ultimately, the game is Candyland but the squares to jump on are actually pieces of furniture like couches, chairs, rugs and pillows. The floor itself is lava so you can’t step on it without “losing”. Beyond that, there’s a lot of smaller games within the overall Candyland idea. The first thing you do is pick a number between 1 and 5. You look for the numbers that are the number above what you picked and just remember that anytime they move a square, you move. Starting with the youngest and going to the oldest, one at a time you must either start a quote that someone else has to finish or you can have everyone pick numbers between 1 and 5, except this time it means nothing except if you are the only number of your kind you “win” that round. There are many other pieces of the game, but overall, it really doesn’t make sense because the goal isn’t to win and I’m sure I’m confusing people already.

Glaring at others...

The other party we had was specifically a Halloween party so almost everyone dressed up. I was part of a group that dressed up as the characters from the movie Inside Out. I was Anger. Red...it's still on me...But it was a lot of fun just to hang out in someone else’s apartment for a couple hours again with everyone while in costumes this time. It wasn’t long before many people left to go out so I joined but we only ended up staying out for about an hour. We went to an Irish bar called JJ’s and played pool. After that we came back and hung out on the roof of the building but I went to bed a little bit after.

Wait for it...wait for it....
yup, there I am. Far left.

This week at school I’ve already been pretty busy preparing for all the homework, examples, and projects I will give my kids. Tomorrow I will have 3 classes giving monologues and Thursday I will have two classes of students giving speeches and 1 class giving monologues. Lots of performances to grade in two days without even looking at the other stuff I will be collecting. I am pretty proud of myself, though, because I was able to memorize and perform my own monologue for the kids before they did and I also graded three different assignments in each of four classes. Next week we’ll start new things and I’m happy but also hesitant about some of them so we’ll see what happens. ALSO, I just remembered, I basically have one month to get all the planning and preparations done for the London trip. No stress there. But that’s all I really have for now and this post is already longer than I thought it would be. See ya!