Teaching Adventures: teacher's day

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Teacher's Day

Over the last couple of weeks we have been busy, hence no post for a while, sorry mom. 3 weekends ago I was in Dubai for an IB conference. There are some pretty exciting changes to the History curriculum, so Else and I took off to learn about these changes. While we were there we were able to hang out with Alex and Brenda, and see some of the crazy and unbelievable sites in Dubai. We saw the Dubai Mall, which was nothing short of overwhelming. I would definitely be lost in there still, if it wasn't for dumb luck and Else. There is an aquarium, in the mall, with guys scuba diving. There is an ice skating rink. There are hundreds and hundreds of stores, which are somewhat organized by category, such as sports stores, shoe stores and stores I can't even dream of affording. We were able to eat some Mexican and Asian food, which was a plus with the lack of good quality Mexican and Asian food here in Beirut.

This past weekend was Teacher's Day, so we had Monday off of school. My exceptional students were so kind with great emails wishing me a happy teacher's day. The holiday is big here, with stores having teacher's day displays in the window. Gretchen, Margaret and I went to the Library Hotel in Cyprus Friday night til Sunday night to celebrate with some hot stone massages, Mexican Train Dominoes, and reading in the sun. The Library Hotel is probably the most quaint hotel, with incredible sisters that run the place. Gretchen and I took some great runs/hikes up into the mountains there, checking out incredible flowers, cactuses (cacti?), and just some general peace and quiet, much needed after the busyness of Beirut. There is an incredible artist right by the Library, who collects rocks from the beaches and turns them into incredible statues and planters.

Ryan spent the weekend busy as well. He ran our track meet, then headed up to the mountains with Mike, Phil and some other people to spend the night in Becharre. The next morning, by 5 am, he took off on a 19k snowshoeing trek, uphill in the mountains with the Lebanese Army. It looked beautiful in the pictures, but he was definitely sore.

Today Ryan is off with the JV bball teams to Abu Dhabi for their end of the year tournament. They are looking to bring back a victory. He has a great group of guys, and one of the nights they are there, they are going to a Drake concert. That should be hilarious.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Track meet and teachers day

Girls relay team

We had our first track meet on March 1st. The athletes all did a really great job, and our boys team took first, and the girls missed it by just a few points, which was incredible since we don't have a lot of girls to compete in the events. It was fun to see where the athletes are starting off at, and because it is a short season, it'll be interesting to see how much better they get. We have our next meet on the 29th, and then our big meet April 3-5 we will be in Amman for our final meet. This week Ryan's team got their first win in basketball. He is coaching JV boys, and there are a lot of 8th and 9th graders on the team, as well as one great sophomore. The boys have been working hard the last few weeks and are really improving. They were running plays and working hard, so it was great to see them win.

My students had another Skype chat with a school in Baltimore. It is fun to have them explain to the other school what life is like in Beirut. The students also are putting the Cold War on trial in my IB classes, which is fun to watch them ask questions and try to get their side across.

Thursday night was our teacher night party. Teacher's Day is a holiday in Lebanon and we had the day off on Friday. The school put on an incredible party for us, with food, bands and dancers. It was a great party and everyone had a lot of fun. We had to cut out early since we were leaving for the airport at five am for Turkey.

Dancers at teacher's day party

Band at teacher's day party

The highlight of the last few weeks was our weekend trip to Turkey. Ryan has been in contact with a group there that organizes soccer tournaments for all different levels. The company put us up in two incredible hotels, with all our expenses paid. They were wonderful people, and Ryan got to learn a lot about how the tournaments will work there. He is trying to organize a new tournament, since so many teams don't want to come to Beirut, or other cities in the area.

Our flight stopped in Istanbul and we had a great day wandering around in Istanbul. We have been there before, so it was great to see how much we remembered about getting around since it has been a few years. We were able to navigate the public transit system and make our way around from the airport by bus to the city and to the other airport. We were in Taksim square and that was interesting to see where all the protests were at a little while back. We also sent our tax information out from the old post office in Istanbul, which was funny and quite different to do. It seemed to be that anything Ryan wanted to find there, we found.

Then came our transfer to Antalya, which is on the Southwestern coast on the Mediterranean. We stayed at the Kremlin Palace hotel, and then the Mardan Palace. The Kremlin Palace would be great for teams to stay at, with a bowling alley, pool hall, video game place, water slides, basketball hoops, sand volleyball and more. This is hopefully where the tournaments will be with the soccer fields next door.
The next night we stayed at the most amazing hotel I have ever been in. The Mardan Palace is a five star hotel in Antalya built by a Russian man for around a billion dollars. Yep. Gold plated everything. I'll let all the pictures speak for themselves.

This coming week Ryan is off on Wednesday to Austria for a conference and I will be meeting him there Friday. I am so excited to see another great place that I have always wanted to see.