Life at the moment

I'm in my fourth week of teaching kindergarten and I can see that I am getting acclimated to the new output of energy and time. It has been a big change in our family schedule and we are STILL gong through all sorts of machinations to figure out how to help everyone in our little community group get to and from school and all such activities. I'm not in charge of that schedule and I've very grateful for that!

Ryan started a preschool class with 4 other little 4 year old boys. Another family is organizing it and it has been a great thing for him. I don't think Ryan has hardly noticed that I'm working full time (= that is largely due to the fact that he is also busier but our dear house helper is his primary playmate most days (-;

At the moment I'm sitting outside!! It means the weather is getting better and we are SO ready! At the moment Ryan is trying to show our neighbor boy how to ride his bike now that we've taken the training wheels off. Layla is making dirt donuts with our neighbor girls and I'm so happy they can all play outside again I'm willing to delay dinner and bedtime! The kids are nice but the three ladies don't like me because of problems between our house helpers.....ah the problems unique to our situation! They also had an Ethiopian house helper and they badly mistreated her which of course was difficult to respond to. So who knows if we did the "right" thing but whatever should have happened....the kids like us but the ladies...not so much.

I'm teaching in the international school that Layla attends but it is about 85% local kids.In my kindergaren class I have 21 locals and 2 kids from Egypt. Most don't speak English which makes my job INCREDIBLY difficult. If you include the cultural issues of homelife being fairly undisciplined and unstructured it makes the first school years really chaotic!!  All the experienced teachers tell me that it magically gets better around December. I'm not holding my breath. I have 5 extremely active boys, one with some sort of autism spectrum issue and I think two with some other sort of ADD issue. They TRULY can't sit still for one minute!

So I'm on a steep learning curve about a lot of things in life these days but I'm LOVING it. I've been wanting to get a job for a long time - I'm grateful to have been able to stay home while the kids are young but it has been a struggle. I love having a place in this culture and a place where I can do something meaningful and deep and talk to parents everyday. I use my Arabic for sure though at the moment I'm learning kindergarten arabic (=

I'm grateful for this season.

How To Be Cured of Perfectionism

How To Be Cured of Perfectionism:
Turn at least 40 years old
Live in a developing country in the Middle East for 9 years
Take a job in this place....for which you are essentially untrained for the important bits
Take a job where you need to teach 22 little people how to sit, stand, cut, draw, recognize letters etc etc etc...
......but it isn't stated anywhere that they don't actually speak a word of English....
.....and you are expected to teach them English but it isn't actually in your job description
....and you do have a wonderful local assistant but she refuses to speak to you in English so you essentially need to function in Arabic with her and English/Arabic with the kids
....and you have all the issues of parents but with the cultural component added and the distinct dynamic that bad reports from school and result in fairly severe punishment at home.
Yikes.
Learn to embrace realistic expecations by staring this impossible job in the face every day.....without ignoring your family at home.

This job is fodder for many many lessons and crazy stories!!!

Just an old photo of sweet Layla when she started school at the same place 

My class looks exactly like this except there are 22 kids and they are all locals (=

Facebook Friends

Please note....I am using some of my FB posts on this blog. I am trying to stay connected with people in both hemispheres of the digital world and it is easiest to repeat some posts here.

Photos of England

This is Warwick castle....rather like a renaissance festival in the US....but in a REAL castle. It was amazing!! We saw actual jousting and they not only jousted each other but bags of exploding gas or something and rings on fire and such. The kids were enthralled. There was also a birds of prey show where they send these huge birds swooping over the audience's heads. Crazy. Very English history stuff which I loved being a History major and growing up in the Brisith education system!

Mom and Dad on one of the bridges in London with Big Ben and the houses of Parliament in the background. The third tower on the left is the Tower of London where everyone was imprisoned and beheaded. We had two separate "tourist days" in London but most of the time we did what you see below:

walking in the green woods!!!!!!!

Layla is wearing a present from her Nana...her aunty's old dress and hand-knit shawl which was VERY useful in Britain as it was literally the coldest August on record! We loved it. Ryan is wearing an astronaut dress up outfit from my mom. He went outside in full expectation that he would be able to soar into the air. Oh the disappointments of childhood!!!

We were in England for about 5 weeks and were able to stay in the home of friends of friends. It was in a small village and we LOVED it. Public pool, public library and playground....big treats!!! Tom was there for some medical stuff which was good news all around though his vestibular system is permanently damaged in January by some virus they assume was the chicken pox virus. crazy. His brain is miraculously compensating which is incredible. He does still have fatigue as a result of his brain overworking to learn how to get balance signals with only half the data it usually does but she said that should taper off fairly soon. She was an awesome Dr.

Good times all around!