Hey
everyone!
So I
haven’t been doing too much as of late. I got back to Bahrain on December 31
and spent the next few days catching up on my sleep and preparing for school.
And when I say preparing, I basically mean mentally preparing myself for
working on a schedule again and preparing to see my high schoolers every day.
So far though, it’s actually been really good. Probably because we’ve mostly
been watching movies and doing minimal work as of now, but they’ll soon find
out how important those movies were and probably hate that I ruined some movies
for them. Oh well. By last Sunday, most of the teachers had returned and school
started Monday. Taylor and I got the car on Sunday and also went into school to
re-organize our rooms. Over break, some cleaners came into the school and moved
almost everyone’s room around but no one could actually tell what they cleaned
since all the walls and floors were still plenty dirty. I was lucky as it only
took about 30 minutes to reorganize my room because of the weird seats I have,
but many of the teachers’ desks were still piled up in the middle of the room
and things were torn off the walls. They only threw away some insignificant
papers of mine but lots of teachers lost incentive boards for the students,
posters, paintings, etc. It was a little ridiculous.
On
Friday it was a fellow teacher’s birthday-Savannah’s. For her birthday, many
people went to breakfast at a restaurant that they liked but I didn’t do that.
Afterwards, most of us went to an Escape Room. Well, they called it that but it
was actually a Mystery Room. Basically we went into a small room connected to
two other rooms with locked doors. Using the setup around us, we had to figure
out this fake murder that occurred-how, who and why. There were so many of us
we had to split up into two groups-the newbies and the oldies (teachers)-and
went into two different rooms with the same murder story. We (the newbies) beat
the oldies by 17 seconds. And it should also be noted that we only asked for
one clue instead of two clues like the oldies did. You are only given an hour
to complete the task so it’s complicated because of the number of people in
this tiny room with you but also because you have to figure out how best to
work with each other and still beat the time limit. Many of us want to go back
to the Escape room and complete the other task where they put you into a room
by yourself in handcuffs and you have to figure out how to escape the room by
yourself. We are also waiting for the murder mystery to change so we can go
back and figure out a different mystery.
That
night, another group of teachers had decided that we should check out the new
mall thing in the area-Dragon City. We did go because it had just opened so we
could check it out, however, a lot of the shops still were not open and since
many of us had gone to eat, we were disappointed to find that there were only 4
places open that were all a part of one chain. We didn’t spend too long there
as many of us quickly became bored. The best way to explain it is a huge
storage unit center but with stores instead of empty units. There is supposed
to be about 780 stores in there along with the building next to it of about
half the size full of restaurants, but like I said, most were closed and the
other building wasn’t even open. I think I would go back when I’m not so hungry
and in a few months when all the stores will be open. It was kind of cool to
just walk around for a while but I was too hungry to even look. We left about
30 minutes after we got there-which was shorter than the amount of time it even
took to get there. Since most of us were hungry, we chose to go to a place
called The Lagoon instead of coming back all the way to the apartment. This is
a space around part of the water where there are tons of restaurants and things
to do. I had only heard of it but had never been there but it was cool just to
see and eat. And that was the first time I’d had cotton candy on the island.
The
only other thing that happened this last week and a half was the random
exploration on Saturday. Nolan, Mike, Morgan and I decided to go explore the
southern part of the island. We ended up being gone for about 6 hours, but it
was well worth it. The first thing we did was make our way to the farthest
south of the island that we could go. We planned on going all the way down but
there was construction and possibly a military block, so we had to stop a couple
miles short of the shoreline. Since we had only been gone for about 45 minutes
(we got lost because of Mike’s directions) and since two of us hadn’t been to
the Tree of Life, we went there. It was only about 20 minutes away so we drove
to it and spent about 45-60 minutes there. They were right, it is literally
just a tree. I think I’d be more impressed if there were no plants around it.
On a side note, I had a pet gecko for all of 10 seconds when I was there. Nolan
and I found one and I caught it. Our plan was to put him by the tree but he
jumped out of my hands.
After
we left the Tree of Life, we decided to go to the only mountain in Bahrain; or
as I should say, “mountain.” That took another 45 or so minutes because of the
military/detouring and Mike getting us lost a little bit again but it ended up
being pretty fun. We got to the mountain and some random people in the parking
lot told us that we couldn’t climb all the way to the top because the military
had a building on it but we could climb about half of it. We did climb up one
of the tallest parts of it and we could see the military operation a couple
hundred feet away but there was a fence across some of the mountain. We also
decided we’d rather not get too close to the fence so we stayed away. We probably
only climbed for like 10 minutes because, quite frankly, there wasn’t much to
climb. Nolan and Morgan thought they saw a cave so they went to go explore it
but it ended up just being a hole. I saw, what I thought, was a cave on another
part of the mountain so I went there but it also turned out to be a hole. We
ended up all finding a big enough hole that we all sat in for at least 30
minutes and just threw rocks at other rocks. We’re that exciting. We only left
because it was getting dark and it would be challenging to climb down the
“mountain” in the dark. 
On the
way back to Manama, we were all hungry and Morgan and Mike had mentioned that
they found a very good Indian restaurant in the souq so we went there to eat.
It ended up being absolutely amazing and I don’t even like Indian food very
much! Also it was a huge plate for really cheap and I couldn’t even finish all
the food. I think it was only about 8BD ($21-22) for all four of us and even
some leftovers. The only thing I would say is that I needed some food that
wasn’t so heavy but I did have some water and a mango shake so that helped a
little. 
Other
than that, I’ve pretty much just been working or hanging out. I’ve been planned
ahead for most of the school year so far so I work on one or two things each
night just to stay ahead but I don’t really even need to. Midterms are coming
up starting next week and I’ve already volunteered some of my time to help some
friends who have to give an hour and a half midterm (I don’t have to). Most of
them have a ton of kids and only have a weekend to grade them all before grades
are due. Yup, so until after midterms I probably won’t be doing anything but we
shall see next week when I’m writing my blog!
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