Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day always gives me baby fever.  Seeing posts of my friends and their kids makes me a little bit jealous.  Inshallah, one day I might actually be a mother.  Until then, I just take care of other people's children.  LOL. 

I have got to update more frequently because my memory is bad.  So, here is what happened since the last post judging from the pictures in my phone:

This month we are celebrating "Abu Dhabi Reads."  One of our parents decided to host the children at her house.  She read a story, did a demonstration to go with the story, and fed the kids.  I love the small community and parent participation.  She even had enough small, kid friendly chairs in the house for every child.

We went to the park to read on another day of "Abu Dhabi Reads."  I don't think this was a good or fun idea being that it is already over 100 degrees here.  The kids kept fanning themselves and saying "Ms. LaTwya (they still don't say my name correctly), HOT!"  We made the best of it anyway.  I thought the heat would tire them out, but when we got back to school, NOPE, they were still on GO mode!

With every letter that we learn, I try to have the children make something concrete that represents the letter.  For the letter "H," we made hats. The children call them "Happy Birthday" hats.  They sang the whole song.  It is funny because they are not big on celebrating birthdays in this culture.  Yet, the children know the song and associate cake and ice-cream with birthdays.  Someone is celebrating.  LOL.

This is my mini teacher.  She speaks the most English in the class and learns very fast.  In the picture she is fixing the "Letter of the Week" board.  

I celebrated a couple of birthdays over the past few weekends.  We had brunches, dinners, house gatherings, etc.  

I made these for the house gathering.  It's nothing but fruit on a stick but I thought they were cute enough to post.

This beauty turned 40 and has decided she is celebrating for the entire year.  LOL. 

White party at Emirates Palace, brunch at Fairmont, dinner at Meat Company.  Three different weekends.  We stay busy around here.  

Happy Birthday Natalee

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo out here in the desert.  The Jollys, the best party/gathering throwers ever, hosted a rooftop party.  

I think this is all that has been going on.  I have gone to the city just about every weekend since January.  One day I am going to sit still.  Plus, right now my body is in shut down mode.  In the states, I would be getting out of school in a few weeks.  Here, we don't get out until July and it is already over 100 degrees here as I mentioned before.  And Ramadan starts in June.  The entire country will be fasting and it is illegal for us to eat in public during fasting times.  In case you didn't know, the car is public and so is the school building.  What will I do without snacks or at least a drink of water at work?  This is going to be really interesting.