A New School Year

The last school year ended well, except that I was away for most of the final six weeks recovering from an operation. The school will not be using any advisors this year, so the company has moved me to a new school. The new school is for girls from grade 6 to grade 9. This will be new for me, I have never worked in a secondary school, although I have worked with teenagers at Tafe. I am part of a much larger team of advisors, and will be working with the English teachers. I am sorry to be leaving my old school, just when you build up good relationships with the locals, they move you somewhere else.
I had a flying visit to Australia in July, I visited my son, then went to Queensland to see my parents. They then came with me to London, to see my sister and her family.
When I arrived back in the UAE it was still Ramadan. During this month you are not allowed to eat or drink in public during daylight hours, which means you can't even go out for a coffee during the day. With Ramadan now over, the shops and restaurants are back to regular hours, so I went to Dubai yesterday and was able to have lunch at the mall.
I did hit the shops rather, I got a beautiful quilt for our bed from Zara Home, it is white with a delicate silver detail pattern. It looks French provincial, which is a decorator look I love.
I'll write again when I start at my new school, it is an amalgamation of two older schools to one new location, so there will be lots of sorting out to do, and I am sure we will be quite busy.

A week off.

I've worked 12 weeks since the Christmas break, and now we have a week off. We visited the Al Ain Museum today, lots of pots from 2000 years ago, some interesting knives and guns, and some great photos from the early days of Al Ain. The exhibits were not very well labelled, so a lot of the time we weren't sure what we were looking at, or how old it was or where it came from. But for 3 dirhams to get in, not really complaining.
Not long after I arrived, I learnt that the speed limits shown on road signs were not the speed you get booked at. For example, the signs between here and Dubai say 120km/h, but you only get caught by the speed camera if you are going more than 140. This was a bit like an urban myth, passed on from expat to expat. Well, now they have made it official, the newspaper had a report that confirmed this, so now we can comfortably drive at 140 and not worry. Usually we don't go more than 130, the roads are very good most of the way, so we are there in around 75 minutes.
We are going to Dubai on Friday, as it is my birthday, and the one thing I want to do is go up the Burj Khalifa. I have pre-bought the tickets, saving 600 dirhams! I just hope it's not too dusty outside, sometimes there are such bad sandstorms that you can't see anything.
We came second at the quiz night last week, we came away with 2 bottles of wine.
Fifteen weeks until the end of the school year, we have the inspection, a bit like Ofsted, next week, and once that's over we can relax and just get on with helping the teachers and working with the girls. can't wait!

Term Two

Back in Al Ain after ten days in London for Christmas. London was beautiful, snowy, freezing and people driving on the correct side of the road! Term two has started, and at last I feel like I understand what I am doing at work. Great relationships with the teachers certainly helps, and the girls are as gorgeous as ever.
We have had a tiny bit of rain, funnily enough we had a weather warning from the office a day or two before, right around the time my home town was being completely flooded. It rained here for about half a day, just light sprinkles really, and the girls were squealing with delight at the novelty. A weather warning for a few drops of rain? Really?
Wednesday nights sees us at the Rugby Club, for the cheap curry dinner and the trivia night. We had a good win last week, beating about 15 other teams. The prize is dinner for 4, so we will go on Monday night with our team members, before we go to the Monday night trivia at the Hilton. Our team is fluid, but generally consists of Mark, me, Stacy (an American teacher) and Laurence (an Australian ADEC guy). On Mondays, my friend Alissa usually joins us, she works with me in the same position, but looks after Science and ICT, whereas I look after English and ESOL. The grade 4 and 5 girls have done really well at English this year, their work samples have been shown as an example to the rest of the company as to what an 'A' looks like. No other school has students doing as well as ours, so I'm pretty happy. My local English teachers are fantastic, they certainly get the best out of the girls.
Well, I have made it through half of the academic year, and am still very happy to stay on, so will keep adding to this blog.
Cheers,
Michelle