End of the season

Another successful sports season is over. Last night around 11 pm we returned from an amazing trip to Amman, Jordan with the Track and Field team, as well as my fellow coaches Alex and Andrew. The track season has gone by really quickly and in the last two weekends we had our final meets. On the 29th, we hosted our last meet, in which we had five teams competing, and our boys took first and our girls took second place. This was the final meet for about half of the team because they were not traveling with us to Amman.

We left Friday morning from school at 5:30 am, with our flight leaving around 7:30. It was my first time traveling for an overnight trip with students, let alone taking students out of the country. I was so pleasantly surprised at how well behaved these 18 middle and high school students were on this entire trip. It was fun helping the students fill out their forms to leave the country, and teach them how to handle getting tickets and other airport essentials, since I am sure their parents always handle these things when traveling. I know my mom and dad always handled all of this, and I am not sure I would have been responsible enough to do this myself at 12 years old. Anyways, we set off to Amman, and we took up a great majority of the plane. It was fun to see the students interacting with other students that they do not always hang out with and how well they all got along. We landed in Jordan and made our way to our hotel. We set out to find lunch, but Friday is a weekend day in Jordan, and not a lot of places were open at noon when we were looking for food, so we had to settle for the authentic Jordanian cuisine of Little Caesars, which I can not remember the last time I had that to eat.  We headed off to ABS Amman, the school the meet was at, and had some time to hang out and take some team photos. The competition got started a little late, it was not organized all that well. We started around three and got done there around 7 pm. We jumped back on the bus and went to one of the malls to eat dinner at the Food Court.  The kids, and more importantly, the coaches were all exhausted by 8:30 and we headed back to the hotel for an early night, since we had all been up since four am. The next day was a long day at the track, starting off at 8 am and leaving the track at 8 pm. It was a beautiful day in the sun, again, a few hitches in the organization of the meet-including a not needed 4 hour lunch break-but our athletes did really well.
Amman itself, was not much of a city that we got to see. I definitely like Beirut better than the parts of Amman I saw. The people were friendly and the malls were nice, but it didn't seem to have much of a personality.
Our under 14 and under 16 boys took first place and overall our athletes took 61 medals home with us. Some of the athletes even took 8 medals home individually.
Perhaps the most fun part of the weekend was Sunday when we were able to go to the Dead Sea Spa. We had all day to hang out around the pool and float in the Dead Sea. Oh, and the best part, go down the water slide, which I failed miserably at, slowing down so much, however Ryan also did when he went down, so I didn't feel so bad. We were able to relax after the long weekend, and just hang out, which was really nice. We headed home, and landed around 10 pm, and were back to school to a warm welcoming of excited parents waiting to take home their champion athletes. It was truly a wonderful weekend.
This coming week Ryan finishes up the basketball season, and I start up the After School Volleyball for 3rd, 4th and 5th grade volleyball camps.  We had our third quarter parent teacher conferences on Thursday and this last quarter is flying by already. We have less than a month till our Week Without Walls trip to Nepal with 60 some Grade 10 and 11 students. We only have a week and a half until Spring Break, where we will be off to Brussels and Paris to see Christi, Kevin, Marshall and John.

Dead Sea Spa

Ryan and I floating

The pool

Ryan, myself, Alex, and Andrew out for a coaches float

Team at the Beirut Airport with our medals and trophies

Doing abs in the Dead Sea

Pre Meet team photo

The eighth grade boys

The great coaching staff at the meet. 

A few of the girls

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.

Taksim Square

Mardan Palace  

Mardan Palace

Sending our taxes from Istanbul 

Sea and beach at Kremlin Palace

Bowling alley at Mardan Palace

Main area of Mardan Palace

room at Mardan Palace