Well we’ve had the month of birthdays. The kids on the 10th. Mine on the 21st. And Jennifer’s today! I chose Chili’s for my dinner. Jennifer wanted Mexican – no surprise there! We saw Cantina Laredo the other night at Kalidaiyah Mall. We met up with several other LT’s. There were probably 20 teachers there. And it was another LT’s birthday too! It’s neat to meet up and chat about life and things with these LT’s we’ve become friends with. It’s like they are our family now! We feel like we’ve known them forever and are just at some usual dinner gathering when we haven’t known then for that long. Makes you feel like you’re at home when you’re actually 8200 miles away!
The food was actually good. Salsa was awesome. Of course it wasn’t Pappasitos or La Finca but close enough! Can’t ask for the best Mexican food when we’re in the Middle East!
After dinner we stopped my Krispy Kreme for some doughnuts! Here in Abu Dhabi this is more of a dessert place than a breakfast place. So it was some yummy dessert! Jennifer and the kids decided to save theirs for tomorrow morning.
Day two of orientation for us. Today’s orientation was curriculum. Well mine was at least. We were provided with all of the high school curriculum documents. It’s interesting here that everything centers around one theme. The whole trimester (13 weeks) is based on a theme. The students are expected to do a research project that somehow ties into the themes. This project is ½ of their trimester grade. We also had about 5 current LT’s and they did lots of Q&A which was priceless! It was awesome to hear from them.
Before we left I asked one of the male LT’s what he could tell me about the high school boy’s behavior. He said, “get ready!” I knew he was going to give me this answer but I was hoping it was going to be better. He said it’s crazy in the beginning – or rather until December/January. So guess now I need to be mentally prepared! Although I did have a very rough group my 2nd year teaching and I survived that year just fine. So who knows. Inshallah, right?!?
Jennifer’s curriculum day was not really curriculum. It was more on bi-literacy. When they discuss vocabulary they need to do the English and Arabic form. Basically it’s a little bit of relief that what they’re expected to do is what Alief has already expected. Small groups, differentiation, lots of kid observations, assessing performance, etc. Guess that’s why they hired us, right?
Today was a day of new things and irritating things. As for our rental – not happening – at least not yet. So we’ve been hearing others say, “it’s illegal to rent a car in the UAE without your residency visa”, if you’re not a tourist. We’ll we also heard others say no, not true. So come to find out – you can get a rental if you have an international driver’s license. Well we didn’t get one stateside because we were told so many times that you don’t need it which is partly true. So now we just hope the embassy can do it (supposedly they can!). I attempted to get in touch with the embassy but because of Ramadan things shut down around 2ish. So I’ll see what happens tomorrow. And then Ramadan is just about over and then it’s Eid (the festival) and things shut down. And government offices are closed. So our school district is closed until September 4th. So who really knows what’s going to happen when. Again – Inshallah! Either way – we can move now since we have keys but with no furniture allowance yet, why bother!
Our taxi driver today on the way home taught us some Arabic. Not sure about spelling but I now remember one word – cita – which means straight.
By the way – Caralyn loves to wear a sheila (the head covering). She’ll probably come back to the states wearing one all the time!
Stay Tuned…
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