Getting Ready for School

The first day of school is approaching fast! Last week we were busy during teacher in-service getting ready for school, which starts tomorrow! We received our teaching assignments this week and found out we are going to be working hard! I (Jamie) am teaching 7th grade geography, 8th grade U.S. history, 9th and 10th grade world history, and an elective. Tara is teaching 7th-10th grade health, 7th-9th grade science, and an elective. We were surprised to find out that Tara was not teaching any math, but apparently the principle was never told she was hired for math. It was just one of those communication things that fell through, but she is excited nevertheless. The electives are the interesting part of the teaching assignments. We were told to plan an elective of whatever we want pretty much. Talk about stress! It seems to have worked out well though. Tara is doing a food and nutrition class (she is working on stealing a curriculum online at the moment) and I am doing a global problems class.

In other news this week, we are finding how important it is to keep an eye on the clock when out shopping. There are 5 calls to prayer everyday that sound out from the mosques. You can hear them pretty much wherever you are (including my classroom). The three that usually effect us are around lunchtime, another around 3pm, and another around 6pm. If you are in a store around these times they either close and you have to leave or lock you in and shut down the registers for around 30 minutes. I have downloaded an up to date prayer schedule on my ipod touch to keep us on track. So far, the only store that has given us a warning that prayer time is coming has been IKEA (where we picked up some good household items)

Before I go, I want to mention the weather. For all of you in the Midwest or any other place in the country, you do not understand heat or humidity. We are consistently around the 110F mark. I haven’t seen a heat index, but I imagine it is considerably higher when it is humid enough to fog your glasses the moment you leave your home or fog our house windows or sweat through not just your shirt, but your pants also. I believe in Wisconsin we would call that a sauna. We will be and are already becoming acclimatized to heat and have learned to drink plenty of water.

That is all for now. Enjoy the pictures and we will give another update about the first week of school soon.

Enjoying an all staff breakfast at the end of the week.

Tara's science classroom

Jamie's classroom being used for a meeting.

TIDE!

This is what we have to wear when we go into town. Who feels bad for Jamie? Isn't Tara stylish?

A typical picture out of the bus window. Not very exciting.

McDonald's in Saudi Arabia!