What is new this year?
Well, this year my classroom is now in the elementary building rather than in the high school. This makes a lot of sense since most of the students I see are elementary students. The classroom space became available due to the issues with the government floating the Egyptian pound on the world market making things much more expensive for the local people, and the subsequent inflation causing the school to need to increase tuition, along with some new Egyptian laws that make it illegal for our school to accept any new Egyptian students. Because of these things, our school has about 15-25 fewer students, mostly in the elementary school - which meant they now had space to move my classroom. I have more space and more light. I enjoyed the high school staff, but it is nice to now get to know the elementary staff better. Last year I struggled to find manipulatives- this year I am in the building where those things are more readily available.
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| Using Barton tiles to write words on board |
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| One of my goals is to raise awareness of learning differences through-out the school |
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| Volleyball tournament on campus |
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| Middle School Discovery Day - Gary taught compass course. Schutz needs better quality compasses, but the kids did pretty well anyways. |
Another thing that is new is staff. International schools often have a pretty high turnover each year. I think that is one thing that makes international teaching both exciting and difficult. You meet friends, live and work with them for a whole year, then a portion of them get jobs in other places and move away and you are forced to say good-bye. However, we also realize that means we now have people we can go visit in even more places, and thanks to Facebook, it is easier to stay in touch. The exciting part is that each year you get to meet new people. This year we have 3 new staff members who live on campus - all three are experienced, long-time international teachers. I hope to learn a lot from all of them. They all seemed to assimilate quickly and have social lives outside of campus. This is in contrast to when Gary and I arrived, and probably all of the teachers who started with us last year because we were all new to the international teaching field. New experiences are always exciting - and I would imagine just going to a new international school is a bit of an adrenaline rush even for experienced international teachers - but I can't imagine that there is anything like your first international teaching/living experience. Much of last year is a blur, so I am glad I wrote down my feelings and experiences as they happened, whenever I could. The wonder and amazement and appreciation I felt about everything for the majority of last year is something I am now struggling to hold on to. Don't get me wrong, I still feel incredibly privileged to be living this life, but this year I find I need to remind myself to continue to get as much out of this experience as I possibly can because I know there is a cost to having this incredible life experience - I am missing out on a lot of time with family. Which brings me to what is new #3.
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| Two of our friends from last year who are thankfully still here this year. |
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| One of our new friends. This guy has introduced Schutz to the exciting world of Maker-spaces. We now have Virtual Reality, 3-D printers, and robotics. Even our elementary students are learning to code. And, I now have classroom touch-screen Chromebooks! |
Last year I was so overwhelmed with everything that when people spoke Arabic, I only heard a string of sounds - nothing sounded like words. Then, in December, Cassandra arrived. Within a month she had already picked up on more words than I had in my first 4 months! She helped me to be able to distinguish various words during the Call to Prayer and when people were talking. I didn't recognize much of what was said, but I could at least distinguish the words I knew. I have decided that now it is about time to start Arabic lessons. So, starting on Sunday, I am officially going to start trying to learn Arabic with an Arabic teacher who will come to our apartment. My vocabulary right now is only my numbers to ten and about 10 other words! I am hoping to at least double that!
What else is new? Well, this year I am assistant advisor to the Interact Club (High School aged Rotary students) and assistant advisor to the Middle School Model United Nations Club. Our Interact Club has cleaned a beach in Alexandria, is raising money for blankets for people to stay warm this winter and is raising money to put on a Christmas event for our employees and their families, among other things. They also plan to support an orphanage, but I am not sure which orphanage they plan to support and how. This is a student-run organization, so the kids make the decisions. The Middle School Model United Nations club makes me wish I had known about this years ago as they study world issues, various nations, and pretend to write and debate policies. It is very interesting. We will be traveling with the students to Turkey for this activity where the kids will be simulating the UN with other students from all over the region. Fortunately for us, the recent restrictions on traveling to Turkey only apply to US citizens traveling directly to Turkey from the USA.
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| Beach clean-up with Interact, Volleyball players, and staff families from Schutz. This young friend worked so hard! (We will miss her next year when her family moves on to another school!) |
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| Estimated 800 pounds of garbage picked up from the beach! |
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| Baskets made by the kids we visit at the orphanage |
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| Kids at the orphanage are learning how to make wicker furniture |
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| The Alexandria Rotary Club paid for this new kitchen to be built at the orphanage |
Another new experience this year is to get massages at the Four Seasons. The Four Seasons is only about 3 blocks away and has a nice spa and massages for about 50% of what you would pay in the USA. I like this change.
We also tried out a restaurant in the Four Seasons. We have now found a place for delicious Australian rib eye steaks. We also ate at a place near the Greek Club with the elementary staff. It had a great view of the city and some delicious food. Some of the people on campus have found some great bakeries with delicious chocolate cakes. By the end of last year, I did not want to see one more grain of rice, one more spaghetti sauce with olives, or any more Egyptian food - and I was really looking forward to going back to the USA to eat a great steak, chicken noodle soup, raisins, and some good chocolate desserts. I am happy to say that between cooking more in our apartment and finding some really good restaurants and bakeries, food might not be as much of an issue for us this year. (Although we still have not found good raisins) I didn't lose much weight last year because I wanted to try everything - I am not losing much weight this year because I have found too much I like to eat! Oh well.
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| This is celery! I would have never recognized it because it is so small, but our friends told us to expect it to be miniature size of what we would expect. I made potato salad and chicken noodle soup - the celery made all the difference! |
Our apartment this year is new to us, but we are not yet in our "new" apartment. They moved us inside campus because this year we have fewer staff members and so apartments were available. Last year, the school rented from another company that had an apartment building just outside the wall. It was cool to live in the "real Egypt" - being forced to step outside the campus each day to see every day life in the neighborhood and it even gave us empathy for those who have to live every day with internet so slow it might take an hour to watch a 30 minute Netfix show. Even uploading pictures to this blog was a test of my patience - sometimes it would take all day. Now, writing a blog and posting pictures is so much less frustrating!! The other teacher who lived off campus with us said it was a "psychological break from work" just stepping outside the wall - knowing that you have a place to work and a place to live. I understand that more this year. Campus is really just a slice of America - if you never go outside the walls, you can almost imagine that you are living in the USA. The internet works so much better on campus as I have stated, the grass is green, well, the fact that there IS grass is quite unique here! - the flowers are beautiful, everything is kept so clean. While living on campus you have a ready supply of people to do things with and we feel "more-connected" to everyone.
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| The building we are in this year is part of the original villa that served Missionary families on retreat, and later was used as a boarding school for missionary children. In the 1970's, the building was converted to apartments for foreign-hire teachers. The ceilings are at least 12 feet high, and each apartment is unique and funky. For example, between all these rooms is a hallway that is big enough to be made into another room. |
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| The living room and bedroom both have doors that go out onto a big covered porch area. Therefore, these apartments do not get much light during the day. |
The newly-built apartments on the 4th floor of the elementary building are nearing completion. We are hoping we will be moved in by Christmas. There was some talk about getting us in by the end of October, but that may have been optimistic. That being said, I believe our exact apartment might be completely done as they did haul furniture up there and used our apartment as the model for the school board. We snuck up a few weeks ago and admired the open kitchen/living room space and the beautiful big windows. They also used some nice wood-looking tile for the outdoor hallway between the apartments and some pretty tiles inside the apartments The recessed lighting is very nice as well. I don't think I got any pictures while we were up there, so you will have to wait until we actually move in. The hardest part has been the fact that we have not yet unpacked all of our boxes at this apartment because we keep expecting to move over there soon. Tonight we sat on the steps of the elementary building when the Call to Prayer started up. Someone installed a speaker that is pointed right at the elementary building. They seem to blast that speaker louder than all the others. It so loud in fact , that the sound is highly distorted. Even if we COULD understand Arabic, no one would be able to understand what is coming from those speakers. Our Egyptian friends have told us that some mosques will purposely turn their speakers in the direction of where they know there are foreigners in order to try to convert us! I don't know if that is true or not, but if they really wanted to convert people, I think they might have a chance at being successful if they would speak their message clearly in English and have their speaker turned to a reasonable level so as not to make the foreigners upset. Anyhow, we now know our new apartment will be in direct line of that awful speaker.
We have submitted our intentions to stay another year, as long as the school still wants a Learning Support program and still wants me to set it up so that it can be sustainable. Next year's head of school and his wife both have backgrounds in special education, so as long as they are willing to have me stay in my current position of coordinating the program, we will be here again next year. If not, then Gary will move forward to find us a sailboat for the next chapter.
Speaking of which, Gary has signed up for a IYT crew and captain courses in Thailand in December. Once certified, we will be able to rent a sailboat for our Christmas vacation and sail by ourselves! In addition, Gary will be qualified to work on other people's ships, if he wants to do so. We have rented a sailboat for 10 days during Christmas, and I am really looking forward to finally finding out if the sailing life will be for us.
Gary had also been asked to chaperone the elementary soccer team on their trip to Italy in November. I think he is getting more out of this experience not working than I am while working! Italy will be his second country that he has visited that I never have.
The Eid Break happened in September. It was shorter this year, just 5 days. We spent our time in Greece, mostly along the beaches of the Chalkidiki peninsula of Sithonia and a day in the city of Thessaloniki. The beaches were nice, all with various coarseness of sand, but not much to see while snorkeling. We took a drive through the mountains, and visited an old village.
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| Map of the area we stayed. We stayed on the middle peninsula. This is the area that Odysseus is said to have recorded his travels. We did not see any Cyclops. I think it was FAKE NEWS! |
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| There is a law in Greece that the restaurants must give you your receipt FIRST and it must be kept visible on your table in case the authorities come and ask for it. Once you leave, it is fine to throw it away! |
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| Greece seems to sell a lot of good quality mink coats. There were fur shops everywhere! |
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| This is a colorful house in the old town part of Thessaloniki, behind the wall |
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| Notice the old wall behind this beautiful tree in Thessaloniki |
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| View of Thessaloniki from the White Tower, part of the old wall |
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| Inside a small chapel in Greece |
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| Mt. Athos - This peninsula is only inhabited by monks and no women may enter for any reason. Men who are not monks may visit only with special permission. |
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| One example of memorial buildings that can be seen all over Greece. They are usually filled with photographs, religious Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic icons, and a lit candle. |
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| Greece is very hilly |
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| Nice restaurant next to the yacht harbor |
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| This beautiful yacht came in while we were eating |
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| Fun to admire the boats and catamarans |
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| Enjoyed many beautiful sunsets in Greece. #Nofilter |
Soon we will have a long weekend when we will get to travel to the Sinai Peninsula to enjoy snorkeling on the beautiful coral of the Red Sea and we also have plans to climb Mt. Sinai, where Moses supposedly encountered the Burning Bush.
