TGIW

What a week! It's been midterm time, and wowee zowee what a mess. We got the wrong exam for my level, so there were lots of frantic phone calls and grading and giving another exam and more grading. Needless to say, my girls did significantly better taking a test on material they had seen before than on stuff that was completely new to them! I was so worried yesterday when I gave them the new exam that they would do even worse than on the first one! But they came through just fine, and I was never so proud! It's funny, because I have a new co-teacher, so she's usually taught in the pm, while I have the am. Now we do half and half to cut down on our planning, but we still refer to each group as "my girls" and "your girls". So as I was cross grading the exams, I was looking to see how my girls compared to hers. She won for the top grade, but I think overall mine did better, so I'm quite pleased!! :)

Anyways, all of this combined with some outside stressors made for quite a week. I've never been so happy to see the weekend as I am here. I can't believe we were on vacation just a couple weeks ago! I need another one!

Last weekend we enjoyed the hospitality of a friend and went to a Christmas party. It was like a little slice of home, which was really cool. And I got to play a piano!!! :) We also went traipsing through the desert again, and enjoyed some Christmas carols and meeting new and special people. It's always an adventure! Oh oh oh, I saw my first scorpion! I hope to God it'll be my last one too. It was kind of see through and green and alien-looking. Yikes! To go for the hike, we gather in one area of the city, and then people with cars who are heading out for the hike pick people up who need rides. My last driver was about an 80 year old German who loved to chat. He was super interesting though, having built many of the desalinization plants here inside the Kingdom.

This weekend should be fun, though I must confess, I am planning on sleeping in tomorrow!! Oh boy, I can't wait! As I was turning off my alarm at 6am this morning, I just lay there and thought about how much I dislike getting up that early. The sun wasn't even up! Lame. Then I thought, oh boy...another 8 months of this. Then I thought about how much I admire people in the public school system who get up that early and then teach ALL DAY. Wow. I don't think I could do it.

The pictures are from when I was in Al-Khobar, on the east coast of the peninsula. Yup, I've touched all sides of the Arabian peninsula. Check that one off the bucket list. :) Bahrain is in the haze behind me. It's as close to the outside world as I'm going to get for a while!