My B-Day

Well it was my 23rd birthday yesterday. We are getting a little more into the groove of working with the kids and figuring out how things work there. Jamie got switched over to Music class and I am still in art… maybe for the year? The music teacher is really cool too, he is my age and speaks really good English and has lived in Texas before and is ½ blind. He tells us things no one else will. Like the word in Arabic for foreigner, he taught us the word because that’s what people there use when they are talking about us in Arabic. Not that it will help us much but I guess we will know ! ...or just be more paranoid. The biggest difficulty is the language barrier. It makes it very hard for us to do anything with the kids because of it and can’t really enforce rules that way. For instance, the teacher stepped out of the room to talk to another teacher by the door way, in the meantime two boys started hitting each other and running around the room chasing each other and wrestling. I know the word for “no” so I keep saying “LA! LA!” but they know we have no power so that didn’t help, I also tried to step in front of one but he was bigger than be and that did nothing either, the teacher was right there and one girl was yelling “MISS MISS!” as her…. But nothing, finally I went over to tap on her solder and told her I needed help.

I was a little late for dinner (with the group) since I was talking to my mom so everyone was already in the other apartment waiting for me. When I got there they started singing Happy Birthday and there on the table was Papa John’s Pizza! I was sooo excited. It was the best idea, I had seen it a couple times driving and told them it was my favorite pizza from the U.S. so they thought it would be great for my birthday dinner, which it way! They also made me a Funfetti cake, which is also my fav ☺ it was a good night. Thanks for the messages also, there were nice to read.

One of the staff at the school also gave me a pretty necklace with a snail on it. He said he felt bad we couldn’t have a party since it was Ramadan. It was very nice of him to get me a present though!

Today (Tuesday) we had a shorter day since we went to the police department to renew our Visas, not much new to talk about but one interesting thing happened today. The teacher had a meeting and I guess when that happens they just leave the kids by themselves, which is not a good idea. Four of them were sitting in the art room, which I actually didn’t know and wasn’t told to watch them. I notice one grab a broom and shut the door so I went to do damage control (because I’m so good a making them listen right). Turns out two were fighting, hitting each other and another one was just grumpy causing trouble. I got them some paper to color on so they would have something to do and then had to stand between the hitters because telling them no, or LA didn’t help. I managed to keep them from killing each other (notice I didn’t say peace) until the teacher got back. The art teacher is 2 months pregnant and she told me that in the meeting they discussed that when she is sick and when she has her baby and will take some time off work that they want me teaching the class. The idea of actually helping sounds great however I’m not sure how I will be able to tell them what to do as well as keep them from fighting. We will see! Only 2 more days of work and then it’s the weekend again!

I have several new photos all of the kids at school, click this link!