Wednesday, August 17

We've started school. It's back to work. We still aren't sleeping through the night, though, so that's been a little bit difficult. Hopefully, we'll get adjusted before the students show up. We've spent the last few days sitting around in meetings, a lot like any U.S. school. This is very different from last year, where we all sat alone in the teachers' lounge with nothing to do. It's a postitive sign for the year.

We found out what we'll be teaching this year. I'm teaching language and literature as usual. I think I mentioned, though, that Joe is adding literature to his teaching. The director only hired social studies teachers, so they're all stuck teaching English. I feel sorry for the new teachers who are teaching all English or P.E. when they're certified for American history and government. Go figure. It should be entertaining.

Egypt is the same as always. We are debating moving to a different area of town called Maadi since our lease is up on Oct. 1. All of the new teachers moved there. There are more expatriates living in the area which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. Right now we're just going to look because we're not sure if the school is going to make all of those teachers ride the students bus. I don't think I could take it, mainly because it takes like 2 hours to get home when you ride the student bus.

It sounds like we're going to have lots of vacation time spread throughout the year. Not a lot more than last year, but for some reason it seems more lumped together. Maybe we'll get some traveling in. Right now, we're waiting for the Egyptian government to decide when it wants to have its nationwide two-week school holiday. It could be sometime in January or February. Whenever they feel like it really. I guess they don't understand the concept of publishing a school calender, so they're not too concerned with deciding about the vacation. It keeps us on our toes.

I wish I had some interesting info for you, but it's life in general.