short update

It’s been a while since I’ve written.

Not a whole lot more to say. The second week of school is done. The students in two of my classes have started to get better. A third class is showing signs of coming around and my forth is still terrible.

As in the states I’m finding my lesson plans useless, I wrote them to please the “HoD” head of department, but they didn’t offer anything to me. The days I didn’t even open the file and just winged it were better. I had the exact same experience in the US.  Right now the students’ behavior is a major issue and it’s taking a lot of my time every day. I’ve asked for help at each level of the school and their solution is to yell at the kids. Each level of the administration has had a turn yelling at them, and it has the same effect each time: nothing. They finally asked me about consequences and they will try them out to see what happens.

Last night we had our parents’ night – in the US open house – was about the same experience as in the US. Although I work in a very small school, so it was a little different. The principal spoke to all the parents for about 30 minutes (in Arabic), and then the parents had a chance to visit all their child’s teachers. Of course I only teach boys, but both mom’s and dad’s came. I will admit it was very different talking to a woman dressed in her abaya and only slit to see her eyes – everything else covered. Very hard to communicate when you can’t see facial expressions.

Seems as I hit the one month mark here in the Middle East I’m starting to grow a bit lonely. Dubai is a great city with over two million people and nearly unlimited things to do, but it’s hard to meet people and do things with other people. I have gone out with my co-workers several times, and that is fun but it would be great to find addition friends in the area. The desert is a tough place, but it’s manageable. I think I just need to find a rhythm at work and stop worrying about it so much.

I still love geocaching, but with the crazy road system that’s hard to do. I’d typically find 30+ in a day of local caching in Texas. Here I’m lucky to find 4-6 a day. I also need to start hiding caches here. Just haven’t had the time and energy.

After back to back personal training sessions at the gym my whole body was sore, so I haven’t been to the gym in three days! I must return tomorrow for yoga and Zumba. I missed them both. A few other teachers at work are interested in yoga as well, so I may start teaching a class at school to the other teachers. I had a blast doing that in Texas, so maybe I can make it happen here in Dubai also.

Oh we also drove to Oman two days ago to get our passport stamped again. Our 30 day visit visa expired and we had to leave the country (technically) and return to get a new stamp worth another 30 days. We are waiting on our documents to arrive so we can apply for an employment visa or residential visa.