End of the School Year

I have had a few things in mind to post, but it has been BUSY around here. Layla was very sick for an entire week and now Ryan has the same thing )= Just a high fever and no real secondary symptoms. So we've been close to home for about two weeks now.

The heat is really coming in now....it has been around 95-105F which really isn't summer weather but that is starting to change. I don't consider it really HOT (at least this is what I tell myself!) until it hits 110. This afternoon it was 114 which is hot but the worst thing is even at night in the total dark it is still 100 degrees (= We are hoping to get our pool set up! We need to get a shade put up though so the water doesn't just heat up....that is pretty icky.  Poor Tom has about 50 errands to do to get this accomplished.

Anyway, the other thing that happened this week is the Certificate Ceremony at Layla's school! She is finishing KG2 and is going into first grade this coming fall! We are very grateful for the school and how positive it is. The principal has a great perspective on trying to educate a whole community and not just the student.

The big push this year was to have SOME sort of order at the certificate ceremony. Typically at big functions like this (which, honestly, rarely happen because women and men don't often sit in the same room) is that the kids run around everywhere and everyone talks on their cell phones. Last year the girls were in AMAZINGLY elaborate dresses. Basically on par with what a NYC fancy wedding flower girl would wear....hair all done up, henna etc etc etc. It is super fun and way over the top. There are also families who bring tons of big balloons, gift bags large enough to hide a small child and many other distractions. 

This year, they INSISTED the children wear their uniforms, arrive early an wait separately in an air-conditioned tent outside (I cannot imagine being the teachers and having to entertain 200 kids in a tent a 8pm at night waiting for their three minutes on stage!) The end result was a much more efficient and streamlined event. 

The afterschool program I do is at this school and the highlight of the evening both last year and this year was the Tae Kwon Do demonstration! It is about the only time when the entire audience is quiet and not looking at cell phones or something (=

Just to give you a sense of the room. Not sure you can actually see anything but this is a cool function of Tom's phone!

Layla is walking on stage with her class. She is the last one in this picture.

Here they are getting lined up for their picture

Her teacher is on the left and I'm not sure of two of the men but I'm sure they are in charge somehow. The guy in the middle is the vice principal who is a very wonderful man. He was with our current principal at their their other school in Sohar. He commutes every week in order to work at this school! The gal on Layla's left is her best buddy.

There is always a small portion given to reading the Q'uran. When this poor kid stood up he dropped the Q'uran! Not sure what his parents must have said later but it is a big honor to be chosen to read.

The After School Club - Music class!

So much of life out in the Middle East for me is doing things that I don't really feel  confident about. Part of that this semester was teaching a Music class to 10 elementary girls! I had a solid foundation in music theory growing up (thanks to good old Suzuki method and my Korean violin teacher!) so I was able to do some basic things. We also learned how to play a few songs on the recorder!

Doing something like this is much easier out here as the expectations are much lower than in the US. There students and parents expect lots of technology, color photocopies or things that just aren't available out here.

One of the other classes offered was origami and it was amazed at what they could do!!

The After School Club

Our first meeting was this week. We started with the third though fifth graders which is a much easier group than first and second graders (= I am teaching music to the older group and I haven't taught elementary kids here yet so I was quite curious about how it would all go down.

Layla's school is a British Curriculum International school with about 90% local kids and 10% from elsewhere in the middle east and the rest of the world. I remember meeting one family straight from Iran and no one in the family spoke Arabic. Can you imagine? Thankfully there was some staff member around to translate for them.

The school has been open for three years and is adding a grade every year. The principal and core of the staff are all from South Africa and they are top-notch. The prinicpal says he prefers not to hire american or european teachers because their expectations are too high. They are not prepared to teach with limited materials, or to teach children with families with very very low education levels. Most of the 40 year olds in this country did not group with electricity, paved roads, hospitals or elementary education. Those of you who have been in developing countries know that a country without a long history of education has a whole host of issues that will be worked through as it creates its own educational foundation amongst its people. The principal believes that most South African teachers are more familiar with this dynamic than their American or European counterparts. I think it is a very valid observation.

So anyway - a friend and I decided to start the after school program because we were both hankering to do a little something more in the community and we both had kids at the school. The leadership is very grateful and supportive of us running their after school club because it means that they do not have to do it themselves (= So it is a win-win. We do charge for it for many reasons but MOSTLY to make sure kids actually attend regularly! We have about 7 "classes" offered at any one time and from 50-75 students involved depending on the semester. We are in our third cycle of doing this.

The music class that I taught was pretty basic. We are just doing some rhythm things and will do some basic theory along with having some guest performers. The strangest moment was when I asked a girl her last name and she didn't know what to say. It is similar here to what you read in the bible: layla, the daughter of so and so the daughter of so and so the daughter of so and so etc etc. So she wasn't sure how far to go back and then her friends told her to give her tribe's name but she didn't seem to clear on that (= So we just settled for her first name and then a few more back from that (= So interesting.

I'll post more as we have more going on....the biggest news this week, actually, is that it has been raining off and on for DAYS! this is so amazing. It also means our roof is leaking water. But hey, we love rain out here!

Catching from Easter, to Sue's visit to our road trip

Our wonderful Azeb baking Ethiopian bread at 4am!

 

Sue making Monkey bread 

It took Ryan awhile to get the hang of his first Easter Egg hunt (=

    

Examing in the loot!

Family photo Easter morning 2013

Add caption

Will this work? Captions are not working. I am irritated.

Don't know where this will show up, but after the Easter sunrise service we did an egg hunt then we all took a big nap. Except mama of course.
Then we went to a nice, Western hotel and swam in their lovely pool. It was a fun day and the weather was PERFECT. The camels were randomly walking down the hill behind the hotel. So crazy.

Have i said yet how irritated I am at this crazy caption thing? What is the point?? I love the sunglassse on the kids (=

Our Easter photo - keep in mind we had just come back from a sunrise service in the desert (=

                              

Putting the crib together!

 
 
 
 


This is the process of putting the crib back together. I bought this from another family for $30 for Layla and it is a really nice crib that assembles fairly easily.

Mom did a great job of putting it together while I did this:
Note: If you are going to be flat on your back for awhile, and you are a girl, get a pedicure. You'll spend more time looking at your feet than you imagined. I'm SO glad we had time to get our pedicures in before the baby came (=

Layla helped out for about 30 seconds and then spent her time doing this:

Quick little video - our lovely tree

I'm trying this video to see if things are working again - we'll see. The tree outside the window is SUCH a pleasure to look at and provides a surprising amount of shade which is worth gold around here! In fact, for mother's day we went down to a plant store to look at some more trees to plant behind the house where the sun is the hottest - particularly around the kitchen. Keeping things growing is a big deal with having to water sometimes TWICE a day in the summer! But it is worth it to see green things (=

Some of my favorite things......

This is our bathroom sink. What I LOVE about this sink area is that Tom installed those wonderful globe lights (yes, one has a broken globe but we're just ignoring that) and that stretchy mirror. For those of you who are as blind as I am, I get SOO tired of leaning over sinks to get my face into focus. This is a significant problem when 9 months pregnant..... I enjoy this every day (= Not like I"m putting make up on everyday mind you! Too hot and pregnant for that.













This is my big, extravagant American washing machine. Very run-of-the-mill for you all in the US, but these are not common here and we had friends who reccomend just buying it when we arrived. I think they had gone through 4 washers combined in 5 years at the time (= So, grateful for the advice I love this and use it all the time.

My favorite feature is that you can actually wash a TINY load. With water being the way it is here (another post: getting ANY control over water temperature in the summer) it is helpful to do small loads when I want (=

It is actually sitting over the place where the arab toilet goes. Tom's idea and installation - wonderful.

The whole time we were in the US we missed our bed. I've already mentioned this. Someone once said it looked like furniture out of Pride and Prejudice. It is a very hysterically over-done set which is VERY arab. What is even funnier is if you realize that we hunted to get the least elaborate set with NO GOLD PINEAPPLES carved into every space. Needless to say, this is not from IKEA (= We love it though!!

What a hubby....

One of the things about living the life we live is that Tom has to learn all sorts of skills he probably wouldn't have to learn in the US. As things break around the house, he figures out how to fix them. We've had HORRIBLE water pressure in one of our bathrooms and with the second baby coming and my wonderful mom coming for several weeks, we figured it was time to finally address the issue. Turns out it was a simple fix of just replacing all the external plumbing pieces. He did the same in our bathroom and we have a LOVELY shower experience now. One of those small things that just makes life better (=

He's wearing one of his "house candoras" like the local guys wear. They are very cool and comfortable. They are wonderful for pregnant ladies too, I can attest! Mine are just tight enough around the middle that they aren't that comfortable and I certainly can't go out in them. We can visit our neighbors dressed like this, but not really go into town.....

Our Toilet

Lest I forget my initial reaction to our toilet, I wanted to make sure I took a picture and
posted a quick note. When we came home this time we were both shocked and delighted at
this hideous toilet seat.

Toilet seats are one of those things that cannot seem to be found here. We had this flimsy plastic one that never really stayed attached in the back, it had duct tape on it (fake, mind you) and slid around everywhere if you didn't aim just right when you sat down.

This one feels SO sturdy and secure. I'm loving it. Even IF the color and design belongs elsewhere (=

By the way, the hose sprayer you see on the wall is what one uses instead of toilet paper. I had to hunt around for toilet paper when we first got here because I forgot that it is essentially a western thing.

So I probably have a more elaborately decorated toilet than anyone else out there (do share if you think otherwise, I'd love to see the competition....)

Anyway - just wanted to share (=

Layla's bed

One of our issues setting up our house this time, was what to do with a bed for Lj. I'm not a big fan of toddler beds as they are useful for such a short time. We'd like to have a bed for guests, so we were sort of hoping to have a guest bed in her room and that she'd sleep on that.

Haven't found a bed rail-type thing yet that will work, so that option is out. Border issues are making shopping for the rail a wee bit more complicated.

THANKFULLY, she has not had any trouble getting used to the mattress on the floor thing. This is FAR more likely to be what she'll sleep on whenever we travel around in this part of the world and I'm glad it hasn't been an issue. She still does fall/slide off (=

I took these pictures because she is VERY into being a mama these days and this is her baby going down for a reading nap. Lj still does two naps a day - the morning one being a reading nap where she lies in bed with books. This baby is apparently drowning in books (=