Shenanigans of the Wild Wild West

I know two things about living in the Western Region of Abu Dhabi:
1.  Stores don't deliver AND
2.  You better become family if you plan on surviving in this sandbox

This week was full of Shenanigans

-Sunday: what started out as our weekly walk around the neighborhood ended up being a real cultural experience.  A man yelled at us in clear English, "Happy Valentine's Day."  Strange not only because his English was great but also because although they acknowledge holidays in stores and stuff here, they don't celebrate them.  After yelling at us, we saw his car drive into a compound, so we decided to ask if we could go inside the gates just to look.  From the street, we just see big houses.  Little did we know, just like that we made new friends.  He sent us inside the compound to sit outside on a carpet with the women of the compound.  The housemaids served us tea, a traditional bread (I have to start remembering names of things), and sheep stew.  I don't drink tea but I forced it down, the bread is super sweet but I forced it down, I accepted the sheep stew and ate the potato off the plate while I swirled the rest around.  I am a picky eater with a bad stomach in America so I try not to take too many risks here (although there are no preservatives here so the food is much healthier).  Anyway, we sat and talked with the women for a few hours while the small children played outside.  They said they sit outside every night.  The compound consists of a "high house" and many other houses.  The women are all either sisters or cousins.  The compound is a family compound.  It turns out the man that invited us is a family member from Qatar that is just visiting and staying in the guest house (the guest house is bigger than my old house in Atlanta).  The actual man of the house is out serving in the military.  The man from Qatar speaks fluent Arabic, English, and Portuguese.  He has a house in Brazil and talked about his travels around the United States.  If I am not mistaking I think I heard him say he purchased the buses for the schools here while in the United States.  Let's just say he has some flues (money).  The women and children spoke English as well.  This is rare in the western region.  There are more English speakers in the city, but out here the locals rarely speak English.  We had a great time with the women.  They asked us about Kim Kardashian, wanted to know more about my friend's dreadlocks, and told us to come back any day since they are out there everyday.  As we walked out one of the girls was telling me how the compound was set up and how they were all related.  It is not uncommon here that cousins marry each other.  However, this family was not related in that manner.  The little girl also showed me a smaller building on the compound and explained to me that one day her older brother wanted a gym, and that is exactly what he got.  LOL.  I love it!

-Monday: This day was pretty much uneventful other than kickball practice and bootcamp.  Our trainer had us climbing the nets on the playground.  I was one of the only ones that attended bootcamp the week before so I knew what to expect.  He claims climbing the net uses ever muscle in your body, but I just like it because it makes me feel like a big kid!

-Tuesday: Not a good day.  I checked Facebook right before leaving work today to find that a friend of a friend had lost her six-year-old son.  I have been following his cancer journey for a while.  He fought an incredible fight, and he has the most amazing parents.  I am blessed to have been able to follow this journey and witness true strength and faith.  #AJSoars is in heaven now and his parents say that is right where he belongs.  His mom says she is happy.  God doesn't make any mistakes.  Rest well young man.

-Wednesday: This was our play in makeup day.  Now, the teacher of the mini makeup class owns way too much makeup not to be a professional makeup artist.  However, she was an amazing and patient teacher.  Will I wear a lot of makeup after this?  Probably not.  But, I may try to put on a little more when going out.

-Thursday: Happy birthday Ayoluwa!  We decided to have a Pinterest Party for Ayoluwa's birthday.  Every person had to find a recipe (preferably one they never tried) and bring it to the party.  We had so much fun and some interesting dishes, mostly sides, appetizers, and desserts).

My Dish - Taco Dip (It actually turned out good)

Happy Birthday Ayo!

If I could just look older than 12 one day

-At the school: My kids had an amazing week as well.  We worked on graphing and the sense of taste more this week.  After graphing which apple we thought tasted the best, the next day we graphed which vegetable we liked better out of the cucumber and the carrot (we were working on the letter C).      We also read the story "The Cat in the Hat" and made our own hats.  On Thursday, as a treat before the weekend, we watched Cookie Monster's "C is for Cookie" song and made Cookie Monsters out of paper plates.  I took no pictures this day SMH.  Before going to the bate (home), children were allowed to eat one cookie.  It is amazing how a teacher can use something like a cookie to keep kids focused all day.  I think they call it bribery, not sure.

That peace sign is so common here.  Children and adults throw it up in pics all the time.

Happy Valentine's Day

We won our kickball game this weekend.  It was actually fun this week because people weren't so serious.  The guy over the league hosted a get together for all of the teams before the games.  I think this loosened everyone up or it could've been that the games were a lot later this weekend and people (my team) had let go of all that tension, anger, and super stardom that some of them have.  Hahahaha.  Whatever it was, it was fun.  Everyone just played, just like you should do when playing an elementary school game.

I spent Valentine's Day focused on myself this year.  Hahaha.........I can't even front, that first sentence sounds like a cliche lonely people line.  Truth is, I spent Valentine's day focused on myself because I had noone else to focus on.  But, I'm not sad.  Thought I would be bitter looking at all the pics on IG and FB, but I actually enjoyed looking.  I like to see people happy or appear to be happy on social media (everything is not always what is "posts" to be).  Due time for me though.  I'll wait.  I was more jealous of all of the people that got to watch and post about All Star Weekend while it was actually happening.  I am just going to catch up on the dunk contest and three-point contest in the next few days.

Now back to this "focused on me" Valentine's Day...I bought some makeup this weekend.  I am trying to grow up and be a little more girly.  We will see how this goes.  The lady at the MAC counter said I don't even need makeup.  In my head, if you are selling makeup and tell me I don't need it, I should probably listen to you.  Nevertheless, I bought some anyway.  Like I said, we will see.  I am used to getting ready in about 10 minutes.  This makeup better not increase my get ready time too much.  I'm only wearing it when I am actually going somewhere, but still.

I forgot I attended a little VDay Mix and Mingle shindig on Friday as well.  Too bad there wasn't anyone there I would want to mingle with.  

I bought makeup the day after going out.  HAHAHA.  I do everything backwards.  Oh and don't mind the strong eyebrows.  That is how the local women wear their eyebrows.  

It is funny being in class around holidays like Valentine's Day because we don't celebrate anything here other than National Day and other local holidays.  Back in the states, my classes celebrated everything.  Even when the groundhog saw his shadow, we partied.  Hmmmm, when he didn't see his shadow, we still partied.  It builds community and helps make school fun.  Here, I have to find other ways to build community.  Instead of partying for various holidays, we have mini celebrations in our lessons.  For instance, last week before we were rudely interrupted by an assembly, we were going to taste apples to finalize the letter A, to learn about taste, and to start learning about graphing (the idea was to graph our favorite color apples).  However, we didn't get to the lesson on Thursday or today because of the impromptu assembly and library trip.  Insha'Allah we will get to it some time this week.  Since we are no longer doing the letter A, the lesson will just focus on math and science so that we can start graphing and talk about taste.  Today I taught the letter C.  When I said, "This is the letter C," the kids replied, "you see with your eyes."  It was hilarious to me.  They also took a trip to the public library.  The librarian discussed the five senses.  I was proud to see that as she asked some of the kids questions in Arabic, they said the English and Arabic answer.  That, my friends, is progress.

Success in the Classroom

Educationally, this was a pretty good week.  Although the children are still talkative and restless (I'm guessing every 4-year old is), we had some pretty good lessons.  I have found that the children enjoy doing things like puzzles, using dry erase markers, putting things together, etc.  Things like that keep them busy and out of my hair (except when they are yelling "Shufa, shufa (look, look)."

Letter A puzzles.  I printed and laminated pics and then cut the into large triangular pics for the children to put together

Acting out "Ten Apples Up On Top" by Dr. Seuss.  Afterwards we made our own class book.

"I am a boy" sentences.  Children traced the sentence and then matched cut out words to recreate the sentences.  When my children "read" a sentence, they yell STOP when they get to the period.  I hope that is not a problem when they really start reading.

She writes her name on her own.  I always write their names in highlighter for the to trace on their assignments.  This is impressive that she can write her name in English and only the letter "e" is backwards.

Took us a while, but we can now complete simple puzzles without help.

In addition to the lessons being pretty successful this week, we also took the entire class to visit one of my students that was hit by a car (not as bad as it sounds because he came out with a few bumps and bruises and a broken foot).  Each child brought a gift to give to Ahmed.  When we arrived at his house, we took off our shoes off and entered. Ahmad was sitting in the middle of a Victorian style couch in his Kendura.  There was a feast in the middle of the floor.  The children placed gifts in front of him, and then we gathered around the food and ate family style (I ate the pizza, Egyptian seeds, and some fruit).  They teach the children not to say that food is nasty, so I just like to say that I don't care for much of the food because they serve a lot of bready dishes and some are extremely sweet.  I love the sense of family displayed.  Plus, I think seeing him reassured the children that he was ok.  At school they kept using gestures and the little bit of English they know to tell me he was in an accident.  "Ahmad, Siara (car).....boom *makes gestures with hands*"  Then, they said the Arabic word for leg and showed me that his leg was hurt.  It is so cute when they are determined to make me understand something.

A feast prepared by Ahmed's mother and grandmother.

Gifts for Ahmed.

I know that he isn't hurt too badly because when I sat down he started playing in my hair.

Now, with that story being shared, I am so moody as a teacher.  On this day, I thought the children were so adorable as they showed concern for Ahmed.  Fast forward a few days later, and I wanted to scream as the children tore apart the classroom and mixed up all of the Majul (play dough).  What used to be pink, green, purple, and blue is now one big brown blob.  It wasn't their fault.  The school planned a field trip that didn't happen and told us to let them play.  I left them with my coteacher and came back to chaos and confusion.  She is the best teacher ever but not the cleanest, and clearly believes children should have freedom when playing.  I believe in some sort of structure in everything we do.  I went off about some play dough.  HAHAHAHA.  That play dough came all the way from America and they messed it up.  Me going off sounded something like "Same same?  *holds up two different colors* NO?  Lesh? (Why) *holds up blob*  Ms. LaToya not happy."  Makes no sense to you but they get it.  HAHAHAHAHA.  

The weekend is finally here and a friend from college has a layover.  We are going to meet up for breakfast before she takes off.  I am excited, I feel like this is my first visitor.  After that, kickball continues and then I am going to a "Mix and Mingle" party.  The party sounds like an event for the lonely on Valentine's Day.  LOL.  I am sure it will be fun.  I don't care much about Valentine's Day anyway.  I am much more concerned with All Star Weekend!