Guests and Fancy Fundraisers

We had another busy week this past week. Thursday night we had a fancy fundraising dinner for school at the Phoenicia Hotel. The fundraiser was fun because we were able to see so many different parents out to support the school. ACS is raising money for a new playground, and with this one event they raised over $119,000! There was a raffle with over 20 great prizes, and I won a Roberto Cavalli clutch! Anything to help the school! 

Ryan hosted a conference for Art, Music and Theatre teachers in our Oasis Conference this week to develop an Arts festival they will be hosting next year. We were able to host one of the teachers, who is originally from California but now teaches in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was fun to show him around and to compare our experience to his so far. Ryan also had a basketball game and his team won again. They beat our rival IC, so it was a pretty big deal. He has a team of all 9th graders, besides two 10th graders and they have some real talent. Ryan also has started an Instagram account for ACS sports and Activities. If you use Instagram, you should check it out @acsbeirut_sports_activities.

We also had some fun news this week. Our friend AnnMarie from Chicago, has a daughter, Kaitlin, who is a senior at the University of Chicago Lab school. She has May off to do a senior project, and she asked if she can come stay with us for 2 weeks! We are so excited for her to come, and we already have so many things we can't wait to show her. 

Thanksgiving

This week went by fast again. We had four days of school this week, with Friday off for Thanksgiving. Ryan was extremely busy running two volleyball tournaments and two soccer tournaments. Tuesday and Wednesday he had the volleyball tournaments, with our varsity girls and boys getting second place, jv boys getting first place and our jv girls getting second place. So, I guess it was four volleyball tournaments now that I think about it. Then Thursday night he had two teams come in from Egypt. One team was hosted by our players, and we hosted their coach, a guy from the US who has been working in Egypt for four years. Thursday night we went to Gretchen and Mikes for some Thanksgiving football, Detroit vs Packers, which was fun watching it live, just like we would have been at home, but only at 8 o'clock at night. I tried rooting for a tie in this game, but it didn't work. Friday we went to our middle school principal's house for a huge feast with about 50 of us expat teachers. It was a wonderful evening where we got to spend time with a lot of people we don't always get to see. Saturday I went  to a German Christmas fest at a building near by that we call the German building. A few teachers live in this apartment building, and then behind it is a German church. Kind of random. The fest was great.  A lot of homemade crafts, Christmas decorations, sausages, cheesecake, Gluvine, and of course beer. All day Friday and Saturday Ryan was at school running the soccer tournaments in which our girls and boys varsity soccer teams came in second place. Saturday night we took Josh, the coach staying with us, out to dinner. Today the teams leave, and then we are going to go to Gemmayzeh because they are shutting the streets down to cars, and there will be a lot of great booths up for homemade crafts. Then hopefully tonight we will be going to see the Beirut Chants opening night, with a choir singing Handel's Messiah. There will be a number of shows the next few weeks, as well as the philharmonic orchestra playing shows too. There are a lot of great cultural events here to take part in, so I hope to be doing more of that.
Here are some pictures of the holiday decorations around town, and thanksgiving.

Mike carving the turkey

My table at Thanksgiving

German building crafts

German Santa Claus and angel

German Christmas fest

Streets of Hamra

My favorite poinsettia salesman

Stores selling decorations

Grocery store selling xmas stuff

Our school

Another day of orientation. It has been really nice getting all of the new teacher items taken care of here at ACS. The staff here is amazing and they do a great job helping us out with everything. Today we got our pictures taken for our IDs and our blood test and TB test. Good news, I did not pass out! Starting tomorrow the rest of the faculty will be here as well and then we have 9 days of institute. I'm excited about that because it seems like there will be a lot of time to get to set up our classes and work on our curriculum. It's quite the change from the one day institute. Ryan was able to get into his office today and is busy going through everything to see what he has to do. I imagine its pretty overwhelming, but he is loving it.

We still don't have wifi at home, or cable, so I have quickly gone through my mbs. I'll probably have to go today or tomorrow to re-up those minutes again. But it's actually really cheap, 26 bucks a month. Most cafes, bars, restaurants have wifi to use and right now I am at school on that wifi. 

Big adventure yesterday was finding the bootleg DVD shop, which is awesome. Every DVD for 1000 lbl which is less than a dollar.  Actually, 1000 lbl is $.66. There are no US copyright laws so all movies are pirated copies. We brought the PS3 so we can watch movies, but of the 5 we bought only 1 worked. So I took a quick jog back, less than a half mile, and exchanged them. Of the two we tried them, 1 worked. It is some sort of format issue with the PS3. 

Speaking of running, it is amazing here. Running on the Mediterranean is gorgeous. There are a lot of people out running. However, there are a ton of hills so it is tough. Plus it's really humid, and my hair is really huge! 

As far as prices, things are pretty scattered. Fruits and veggies are really, really cheap. They put everything in one bag and weigh it. Other things, like cheese, are really expensive. Like 29,000 lbl which is $19.19. 

Also, I was thinking if you have any questions you want answered email me or whatever and I'll try to answer them, if I know how too. Otherwise I'll ask one of the wonderful people here who we have met already. 

Here are some pictures of some of the school. It is separated into a few different buildings. 

Going to another building

All lockers painted every year

Cafeteria

Outdoor cafeteria

Outdoor theatre area

Ryan's office

Ryan's keyboard

Door of Ryan's office, not sure of who's dog it is...