Featured Photo: This is something you don't see very often back home

You'd be surprised how many times we've seen this sign in bathrooms around the Middle East. I think the logic is that the plumbing can't handle the load (pun totally intended!) of all the paper waste. Here's hoping that everyone's visit is just to take care of number 1!

Vicariously yours,

Our apartment: a work in progress

One nice perk of being an international teacher is that many of the schools overseas provide housing for all their teachers. Our school provided us with an apartment that was furnished with the basics--VERY basics. We got a bed, a wardrobe and dresser, an oven and fridge in the kitchen, 2 couches and a dining room table. We are responsible for purchasing everything else. This is a blessing and a curse. It gives me the chance to decorate however I want and buy as nice or as crappy as I like. The nester in me is SO happy! The financial nerd in me, however, is kinda freaking out with how badly the exchange is not in our favor over here!

That said, I'm posting highlights of our apartment as it is at the moment. Hopefully I'll remember to post again once we've got everything purchased and in place...which might be next year BUT I digress.

This is our entry way. We selected the paint colors before we left for the summer and the school had the apartment painted while we were gone. It was really nice to walk in to a place that already felt a little bit like our own home. We also dropped off the framed items when we came up for a visit in May. The shop did a great job. The camel picture is a passage from the Quran written in calligraphy, but it fell off the wall because the Command strips couldn't take the weight. oops!

This is our scratch-off map that hangs in the entry way. I LOVE this map! I found it online before we moved to Saudi Arabia, but I couldn't find a framing shop while we were in the Magic Kingdom. I love the sense of accomplishment as I scratch off each country we visit together. The list of countries sounds pretty impressive when we count them off on our fingers, but now that I see the visual, I wanna hop a plane right now and add some more color to the map! We left Alaska and Hawaii covered, even though they are technically part of the USA, because I felt like it was cheating to say we'd been to the whole country when we haven't been to the most far reaching points. One day.

Oh, and that little bit of Greenland that shows through just got scratched off while it was waiting to be picked up from the frame shop. Just means that we're going to have to book a trip to Nuuk sometime soon!

These two might be some of my favorite art in the house! We found these while visiting friends in Portland, Oregon last summer. I just think it's so funny to have a print of a pig in a suit while living in a country where pork is illegal. And we couldn't buy Mr. Pig and not bring a long a friend for him! Don't they look so dapper?

Adding to the animal theme of our entry way is the iron deer head key holder. Isn't it funny!?

Turn the corner from the entry way and you've got the couch we bought from ikea. The 2 couches provided by the school were nice, but they didn't offer anywhere for guests to sleep, and we have friends visiting us from Saudi Arabia very soon. The bed we want for the guest room isn't in stock till October, so we went ahead and got a sofa bed. I LOVE it! Watch...

Instead of struggling with an annoying fold up bed under the cushions, there's a little trundle underneath that you pull out... 

And pop up! It's wonderful! I can't wait to jazz up this blah color with some fun pillows. In the mean time, Kitty loves all the room to stretch out and cover with fur.

This is the guest room. Clearly, it's serving as a catch-all for everything that has no where to go right now. We're going to buy some storage benches for the living room and the guest bed we want to buy has 4 big storage drawers under the mattress, so one day everything will have a place. 

The teeny kitchen is across the hall from the guest room. We need to do the dishes right now, so I didn't take a picture of the sink and 18 square inches of counter space that came with the apartment (that's a mature solution to the cleaning problem, right? Just don't photograph it!). To give us more storage and prep space, we bought this fantastic table from ikea. I was a little afraid it was going to be too much, but it fits perfectly in the kitchen and holds everything we need with room the spare. 

When standing with my right hip against the prep table, facing the door to the kitchen, I get a nice shot of our teeny fridge and the propane tank for the stove. For some reason the fridge doors have a lock on them. I have no idea for what purpose you would need something like this, but I'm tempted to use it to keep the doors closed! They're constantly swinging open!

Here is the stove. The glass door thing folds over the gas eyes...presumably so you can have more prep space? Lighting this sucker is quite the adventure!

First of all, please excuse the candied sweet potato drippings that have been cemented to the bottom of the stove...and all the dust that is a constant presence EVERYWHERE when living in the Middle East...

So you turn on the propane using the dial that has the temperatures in Celsius and wait for the hiss. After a few seconds you stick your lighter down that hole in the middle of the picture. The pilot light is somewhere underneath there just above where the sweet potato ickiness is. That's all well and good, but our lighter doesn't reach that far. So we have to take a lit kitchen match and throw it in the hole and hope it rolls close enough to the pilot light to catch! It's a grand adventure. Sometimes it takes us so long to get it lit that just putting the match close to the whole catches the light on fire! Woo hoo! I predict a few blog posts featuring photos of our singed eyebrows. Stay tuned. 

Here's the bathroom. Cause I know you were curious.

Here's our TV. The Mister is very happy to have something to play video games on again. Only problem is that the TV cost so much that we didn't have anything left over to pass as a sort of entertainment center. It should come as no surprise to our friends and family that the Mister is perfectly content using one of our dining room chairs as a resting place for the xbox in the meantime.

So that's our new home! I really do enjoy living here.  I cannot wait to slowly add furniture so it'll start to look more like the home of a couple of almost-30-year-olds and less like that of an apartment of the newly-graduated-from-college-and-broke!

Vicariously yours,

We're still alive!

Given the state of the lives of Americans living in the Middle East, the title of this post is well timed, I supposed. It's also a bit dramatic considering that we have been very safe here in Kuwait. There were some protests outside the American embassy, but nothing compared to the turmoil going on in other countries.

I apologize for the long silence, readers. Since we made the long trek over the ocean back to the Middle East, we have been busy busy busy! We moved in to our new apartment, had orientation sessions with the new school and 50 of our newest colleagues, then had to dive right in to classroom prep and unit planning before the kids arrived! It was A LOT to do, but I have been so happy to accept the professional challenge. The Mister and I are already so happy here in our new home. And, just as I suspected would be the case, I have already learned so much in these short weeks.

1. I CAN fast track my room prep and get ready for a new school year in less than a week (sorta). Those who worked with me in the States can attest to the fact that I'm a little obsessive when it comes to my classroom. In Nashville, I would start setting things up, arranging desks, and organizing files as early as July. I would come in to the school for a few hours each day and accomplish at least one thing. That gave me plenty of time to figure out what kind of desk configuration I really liked, as well as hunt down those cutsy classroom things that just called to me from the dollar section at Target.

I looove setting up my classroom. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and would make believe with my friends. But this year, I had roughly 6 days, zero money and bare bones school supplies to work with before the kids arrived. I was waay out of my comfort zone! But about 3 days before First Day, I snapped out of my panic attack and scrounged together what closely resembled a classroom I could deal with.

And the kids didn't even notice that the room wasn't done!

There have definitely been some hitches that more closely resemble Amber's-first-year-classroom more than that of seventh-year-Amber...but that's the beauty of growth.

2. I CAN drive in a Middle Eastern country! Admittedly, the driving here is exponentially better than the driving in Saudi Arabia. And I obviously do not have a firsthand Saudi driving experience to compare to driving here, but I am happy to report that I am very comfortable behind the wheel in Kuwait! I even had a friend who doesn't have a car and thus hitches rides with all kinds say that I am a very good driver and she would ride with me anywhere.

This is only the second foreign country I have ever driven in, so I'm pretty impressed with myself!

3. The Mister and I CAN survive without internet in our home!  Your could say that I have been in full-on nesting mode since we arrived. We had basic furnishings in our apartment when we arrived, but there was still a lot of stuff to buy to make the new apartment feel like home. Add to that the fact that we have friends from Saudi Arabia coming up to visit soon and you see how I was able to convince the Mister to spend most of our money on things other than Internet service.

Although...we just dropped most of the last of our settling-in money on internet service and satellite TV rather than furniture. Sometimes I let the Mister win.

4. I CAN lose an extremely sentimental item and live without it. Some of you may remember that we moved our stuff up from Saudi Arabia before we headed home for the summer. That was a major blessing because it allowed us to save money on massive baggage fees and we were able to bring over fun household items because all the basics were already here. When we returned, I was distraught to find out that while our apartment was getting painted this summer, someone walked off with my College of Charleston t-shirt blanket. It was one of my most sentimental items and I absolutely loved it. I would be lying if I said I haven't cried about losing this silly blanket more than once. I talked to the man who is in charge of maintenance for the residences and I was basically told that the blanket was gone for good.

I had been prepared for this kind of reality by the Mister's mom, a former military wife. I was informed about the fact that with all the moves something was bound to get lost or broken. I just hadn't banked on it being something so valuable in irreplaceable. Oh well. At the end of the day it's still just a thing.

At least that's what I keep telling myself to keep from crying.

Many more updates to come, dear readers. I'm working on uploading photos of the classroom and the apartment. Stay tuned.

Vicariously yours,

Featured photo: flamingos!

I'm wearing this fun shirt today. That's my classroom in the background. I'm writing this on my new iPad. SO MANY CHANGES TO TELL YOU ABOUT! 

I'm working on a new post that has a lot of details, don't worry!

Vicariously yours,

The lesson planner conundrum

This fall I begin my 6th year of teaching. Over the years some aspects of my job have become easier, but there is one ritual I do every single year in preparation for the new school year that just doesn't get any easier: picking a lesson planning book.

I apologize to any readers who are not teachers. Heck, I might even need to apologize to my fellow teachers out there for such a boring post! Maybe I'm the only person who has such a hard time picking a lesson planner every. single. school year! But it's my blog, so I'm writing this all down for posterity. Join me in my pain.

I have a few theories on why it's so hard.

For starters, I'm a middle school teacher and my local teacher stores in America seem to have forgotten that educators need tools after the 6th grade. Perhaps I'm the only middle school teacher who frequents the parent/teacher stores in my area, I dunno. But 98% of the teacher planners offered in the stores back home all say things like "The perfect planner for preschool teachers!" or "Great planning tools for the elementary teacher!"

WHAT ABOUT ME!?

Because everything is so heavily geared to the elementary teachers, I can never find a planner/record book-in-one that suits my needs. Have I mentioned I'm a middle school teacher? Well, I am. And because of that fact, I keep a lot of records: attendance for each section and each quarter or grading period I teach, grades for every section and each quarter/grading period, records of contact with parents for each student I teach (which this year will total somewhere around 125), behavior matrices for those days I'm doing informal assessments and don't have the time or patience to make up an excel spreadsheet.

I NEED A LOT OF RECORD PAGES, PEOPLE! And yet when I went to the parent/teacher store before leaving for this school year, the most pages I could find in the lesson planner+record book combos was 15!! FIFTEEN 2-page spreads to keep all my records on! That's only 3 spreads per section this year!

So what do I have to end up doing? I have to buy a lesson planner and a record book separately. Doesn't sound like such a big deal, right? Well...those who have ever had the pleasure of seeing my classroom know that my desk is always a hot mess. My students are frequently entertained by my search for the stack of copies that I just had in my hand and yet I can't find in the piles of paper that are on my desk. So my need for a record book and lesson planner in one is a serious necessity. Because nothing instills confidence in your student's teacher like when she spends 5 minutes of your parent/teacher conference tearing her desk apart so she can show you her evidence of your student's grades.

And now that I've added teaching in Islamic countries into the mix, my search is always going to be disappointing. Why, you ask? Because the printers of all the fabulous elementary school lesson planners pre-print the freakin' days of the week in the books! This is all very helpful and time-saving for teachers in predominantly Christian countries who work on a Monday through Friday school week...but in Kuwait, the work week is Saturday through Thursday! It's like they're plotting against me.

It's a hard life, folks, I tell ya.

Every year I go through the same dance. I stand in the planner aisle at the parent/teacher store and weigh the pros and cons of each option on the shelf. Do I sacrifice the record keeping pages? Do I want the long and skinny planner or the fat, notebook-like planner? Why do none of the planners have middle-school friendly sections to write in!? How can any teacher work with those huge, poster-like, wire-spiral-bound planners?! WHY CAN'T THIS STORE CARRY A PLANNER DESIGNED FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL INTERNATIONAL TEACHERS?!

By October I will have completely forgotten about how annoying the planner search is. I will have gotten into the habit of using my dual books and this struggle will be a distant memory. But in the mean time I thought I'd share with you the kinds of things that added to my pre-return flight stress. Like packing and airline fees weren't stress enough.

Vicariously yours,

 

Dealing with Jet Lag: our tricks

The Mister and I are by no means experts on this subject, but it is something that has become a big part of our lives and, in the spirit of letting our readers live vicariously, I thought I would share our tactics for dealing with jet lag.

Some of these might not be new information to you, but here are our time-tested tricks:

1. Nap every chance you can get
We have a super long layover in Germany on our way back to the land of sand this time around, so the Mister and I have booked a day room in a hotel close to the airport. I searched for airport hotels near our layover destination and found the cheapest room that met our needs. There are a few airports in the world that actually have a microtel right inside the airport (Amsterdam Schiphol, for one) so you don't have to deal with the hassle of going back through security when you return to the airport. If you have a layover that is longer than 6 hours, I cannot recommend enough that you spend a little cash on a room in a hotel.

Since our layover will be taking up the better part of one day, the Mister and I are going to get to take a nap, shower, and change clothes before we return to the airport for the third leg of our journey back to the Middle East. This will be huge!
"Nah, I think I'll just save money and sleep at the airport," you say?
I don't know if you've had the pleasure, but it is nearly impossible to hunt down airport benches without arm rests. And once your find them, you can't sleep because of all the noise and announcements. There are some airports that have recliner style benches, but those are hot real estate and you have to stake your claim and not move for the whole duration of your layover. Just not worth it, especially if you're the kind of person who likes to--I dunno-- EAT every 5 hours or so. Nope. We're happy to fork over about a hundred bucks, get real sleep, and feel nice and fresh, thankyouverymuch.

2. If landing at your destination late at night, go to bed right away.
The nice part about our long lay over is that we'll be arriving around the normal time we'd be going to sleep in North America, so our bodies will be ready for some Zs anyway. Once we finally arrive in Kuwait (even though we probably won't be all that tired) with a little help from our good friend NyQuil, we'll be able to go back to sleep while it's dark outside.

We never sleep much on that first night back in the Middle East because our bodies are just so fried, we seem to wake up on our own around 4 am. So we usually get back up around 5 am, take our time getting ready for work or whatever tasks we have to do, and then burn through our first day back in our home away from home.

3. Do something on the first day back.
I had a friend in Saudi who would go shopping on her first day back in the country. The visual stimulation combined with being forced to walk around made for great jet lag (and retail) therapy. Whatever you decide to do, try to spend as much time as possible outside, especially if it's a sunny day. I read somewhere that just looking up at the daytime sky helps to reset your body's internal clock. I have no idea what kind of science went into this finding, and of course I can't find the article now that I want it, but my experience has shown that this little tidbit of information is actually pretty helpful.

But I digress.

The morning and early afternoon of the first day back in the Middle East is never all that hard. But once we get to 2 or 3 pm in the new time zone, we hit the wall and boy oh boy we could kill for a nap! I force myself to stay awake until at least 5 or 6pm on that first day, and let me tell you, that is a real struggle!

4. Go to sleep as close to sunset as possible.
Being that we will be arriving back in the summer time, we will likely be going to sleep while the sun still shines this first time around, but forcing your body to rest as close to sunset as possible will make the second day overseas soo much easier!

As long as you burn through the first day back in town, you should have very little jet lag on the second day. Whatever you do, don't give in and go to sleep before 4pm at the very earliest! You'll get sucked into the vampire cycle: awake all night, sleeping all day. Just keep your mind (or at the very least, your body) occupied for as long as possible on the first day, and you'll be golden.

Vicariously yours,

The woes of packing as an international teacher

The Mister and I are returning to Kuwait very soon (!!), which means our thoughts are filled with packing and airline baggage policies.  Add to that the fact that we are dealing with drama surrounding the Mister's passport (lesson learned: Don't trust the USPS with important documents that need to be returned urgently), and you can get an idea of how low my anxiety level has been for the past few weeks.

Not helping: this is what our bedroom has looked like for most of the summer. Actually, this is pretty clean compared to what it looked like a few days ago. ::sigh::

We moved most of our stuff up to Kuwait when we finished our tenure in Saudi Arabia. That means that a lot of the necessities are already there and ready to be unpacked. I'm really excited about that because it means we are able to bring a lot of fun things with us on our return flight. Souvenirs, artwork bought in Italy, fun decorations for the house, and lots of new teacher clothes are going to make the trip with us back to the land of sand and sun. So why all the headache?

Airlines.

I try to think like a business person. I understand that baggage handler unions and rising fuel costs prevent the airlines from giving passengers free rein when it comes to cramming their suitcases to the max. I don't mind paying excess baggage fees; they're a LOT less expensive than shipping costs. What bothers me is the fact that I'm not really sure how much I'm going to have to pay until I actually show up at the airport.

Here's the story:

Back in June I called the airline to find out just how much we were going to have to pay. The representative was very annoyed that I had given up on scouring their extremely confusing website in favor of talking to a human being and discussing my complex situation.

Based on the information the airline representative gave me in June, I calculated that our baggage fees were going to be about $500 for all our stuff. Not too terribly bad, especially when you consider that our new school will reimburse us for up to $700 in baggage fees per person. I was pretty stoked. We'd budgeted $1000 for the baggage fees, so as long as I gave myself $200 wiggle room, I'd still be under our budget, right!? More shopping for me!!

Fast forward to yesterday when I was double checking and noticed that the baggage information pages on the website had changed. So I called again. Spoke with another annoyed representative who told me that the baggage fees would now add up to TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!! Whaaaat!?

We had to regroup. We culled back through all our baggage, eliminated some of the creature comforts that we didn't really need, and weighed everything. The way I figure it, we have two options:

Pack everything chock-a-block full and deal with the overweight, over size baggage fees (that would be about $1200) and only take 1 big suitcase, 1 trunk, 1 carry on, and 1 duffle bag.

Here's the trunk. We bought it at the beginning of the summer thinking that we had a 100 lb max limit that would cost just $400 to take on the plane with us. Turns out that if we pack it to 100 lb, this once piece would cost us $700.

Option number two is to pack things to within the 70 lb limit, still pay overweight fees on some bags, and take 2 big suitcases (that are only about 75% full), the trunk (only about 50% full, but the storage will be great in Kuwait), 1 medium suitcase, 1 carry on, and 1 duffle. If all my information is correct, all that luggage will cost us $800.

This is what the medium suitcase looks like right now...and we only have 1 small load of laundry that hasn't been packed yet.

This whole situation is so ridiculous! I understand that the baggage handlers don't want to get sneak attacked by a random 100 lb suitcase, and I agree that they should be compensated for schlepping my heavy stuff...but seven hundred dollars for 1 not-that-big piece of baggage!? Seriously!?

Alright. Rant complete. Back to stressing about visas instead.

Vicariously yours,