Hello world,
Those of you working in education know what EOY and BOY stand for. For everyone else, here you go:
End Of Year
Beginning Of Year
Right now, it's everything EOY.
Right now, everything is also BOY.
Right now, working in school is complex.
Everything is a dichotomous mix of:
finalizing/wrapping up
and
preparing/planning ahead.
But at the very least, everything is very exciting right now!
You look at the kids and literally see how much they have grown, developed, learned, matured. They are realizing that in a few short weeks they will be in grade x; they will be older, they will be the ones they currently look up to. They are taking more personal responsibility for things and stepping up for more. It is so great.
However, everyone has one foot out the door. Follow through (students and staff) can be challenging-everyone feels overworked. It has been a long stretch of hard work and the end is so near. Brittney has been counting down the days till 'home' since about 90 days out. Today marks 30 (its on our calendar).
We are fortunate to have family here, but home is home. Home is where the nephews are. Home is where you are balanced. Home is what you dream about on that 19 hour flight home.
Home is 30 days away.
In the meantime, we live in Jubail.
Jubail is where we work.
Where we work has become our home.
Work is a place we go to in the morning,
Work is something we bring back after work.
Work are the people we socialize with.
Work is our life when we live in Jubail.
Some have asked: what happened to your blog? It is all about your vacations, we want to know about life in Saudi.
We thought, and realized: Yes, this is true. What happened?
Things became mundane. But, to keep you in the loop, below you will find a list of all we have done over the past few months:
On the regular we:
-Go to work
-Go grocery shopping
-Exercise in the morning
-'Prep' on the weekend (chop vegetables, make broth, make nut butter, juice and freeze things, make shampoo, lesson plan)
On certain occasions we:
-Went to Bahrain with a friend from San Diego and saw an ancient fort
-Completed majority of Masters coursework (Athletic Administration)
-Coached Basketball tournament
-Broke and fixed* a sewing machine a few times (*finally found someone to fix it)
-Started making a quilt
-Blew out three appliances (the VitaMix survived, Humdullah)
-Caught a few geckos
-FaceTime/Skype with family/friends
-Got into the show, Shameless
-Read/Listened to a few books (fun and professional)
-Lost a phone
-Attended a 12 year olds Amazing Race themed birthday party
-Spilled fresh beet juice all over the kitchen
-Went swimming with Taiyo
-Had a potluck by the beach (with colleagues and family)
-Went to a baby shower
-Updated this blog
Pretty pathetic, right? No wonder there were nine babies born within our school staff last year.
We are both pretty motivated to make things more interesting around here. Unfortunately, it is the EOY BOY and getting those school/work based duties underway take priority right now. Any suggestions? Here are some ideas we have:
-Sew clothing
-Master the ukelele
-Paint the interior (more than just a single color wall)
-Make indoor garden (really poor track record with plants)
-Sketch
-Learn to code
-Successfully establish a professional learning blog/profile
We are sure we are missing some great ideas, we are just so bogged into it all that we aren't thinking out of the box. What ideas do you have?
Those of you working in education know what EOY and BOY stand for. For everyone else, here you go:
End Of Year
Beginning Of Year
Right now, it's everything EOY.
Right now, everything is also BOY.
Right now, working in school is complex.
Everything is a dichotomous mix of:
finalizing/wrapping up
and
preparing/planning ahead.
But at the very least, everything is very exciting right now!
You look at the kids and literally see how much they have grown, developed, learned, matured. They are realizing that in a few short weeks they will be in grade x; they will be older, they will be the ones they currently look up to. They are taking more personal responsibility for things and stepping up for more. It is so great.
However, everyone has one foot out the door. Follow through (students and staff) can be challenging-everyone feels overworked. It has been a long stretch of hard work and the end is so near. Brittney has been counting down the days till 'home' since about 90 days out. Today marks 30 (its on our calendar).
We are fortunate to have family here, but home is home. Home is where the nephews are. Home is where you are balanced. Home is what you dream about on that 19 hour flight home.
Home is 30 days away.
In the meantime, we live in Jubail.
Jubail is where we work.
Where we work has become our home.
Work is a place we go to in the morning,
Work is something we bring back after work.
Work are the people we socialize with.
Work is our life when we live in Jubail.
Some have asked: what happened to your blog? It is all about your vacations, we want to know about life in Saudi.
We thought, and realized: Yes, this is true. What happened?
Things became mundane. But, to keep you in the loop, below you will find a list of all we have done over the past few months:
On the regular we:
-Go to work
-Go grocery shopping
-Exercise in the morning
-'Prep' on the weekend (chop vegetables, make broth, make nut butter, juice and freeze things, make shampoo, lesson plan)
On certain occasions we:
-Went to Bahrain with a friend from San Diego and saw an ancient fort
-Completed majority of Masters coursework (Athletic Administration)
-Coached Basketball tournament
-Broke and fixed* a sewing machine a few times (*finally found someone to fix it)
-Started making a quilt
-Blew out three appliances (the VitaMix survived, Humdullah)
-Caught a few geckos
-FaceTime/Skype with family/friends
-Got into the show, Shameless
-Read/Listened to a few books (fun and professional)
-Lost a phone
-Attended a 12 year olds Amazing Race themed birthday party
-Spilled fresh beet juice all over the kitchen
-Went swimming with Taiyo
-Had a potluck by the beach (with colleagues and family)
-Went to a baby shower
-Updated this blog
Pretty pathetic, right? No wonder there were nine babies born within our school staff last year.
We are both pretty motivated to make things more interesting around here. Unfortunately, it is the EOY BOY and getting those school/work based duties underway take priority right now. Any suggestions? Here are some ideas we have:
-Sew clothing
-Master the ukelele
-Paint the interior (more than just a single color wall)
-Make indoor garden (really poor track record with plants)
-Sketch
-Learn to code
-Successfully establish a professional learning blog/profile
We are sure we are missing some great ideas, we are just so bogged into it all that we aren't thinking out of the box. What ideas do you have?
I think your life is very full! You are having such a marvelous experience we are all envious. What are your BOY plans? I know you are coming home but will it be for just a visit? Will you go back to Jubail? What's next? That list could take some time.
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