You wish you'd get off work for a rain day

I've been back in the UAE for over 2 weeks now, and it feels like I never left to go home for Christmas! Christmas was wonderful. It was great to see everyone, and to remember what cold feels like, and to see trees and woodland things. I loved it, but I was ready to return to my sandy home, where nothing ever gets done by anyone and your floor is permanently dirty because Sharjah is basically a desert. It's pretty cool.

At work, we had to come back to doing dreaded REPORTS. (aka report cards). We had to fill in all of our numbers and blah blah blah; it was actually surprising how difficult it was to get everything sorted (because the online site wasn't up and running totally yet.) But, my grades are in! I need to write my students' comments, but then I'm good to go. Here they give out E's instead of F's: the actual one practical thing people have going out here. E does come after F, after all.
Moving on, my students and I have been getting back into the swing of things. I've been attempting to be more organized and structured during my day, and that's helped a bit. But I still have some students where you just want to leave the room because they drive you absolutely crazy. "All right, guys, what goes at the end of the sentence?" "Full stop or period," everyone says. I move to the next sentence on the board, and a boy raises his hand. He says, "Put a dot at the end of the sentence." I reply, "Ok, what is it actually called?" "I don't know." Oh for the love of all that is dear and holy!!! Or I'll give directions to the entire class and repeat them many times. I count on my fingers how many times I repeat it, and I look everyone in the eye. But there's that little guy raising his hand the whole time you're talking. You call on him when you're finished, and he says, "What are we doing?" Internal flash of anger. So, that was tough to come back to, BUTTT, I have created a motivator. Whenever I see the entire class doing something properly, I give them a scoop of sugar in our class party jar! When the jar is full, we will have a class party one day. The kids are loving it so far!

Surprisingly enough, the weather here has actually been quite chilly. I even wore a jacket the other day! It's in the 50's in the morning, and then it moves up to the 60's and 70's during the day. When I first got back, it was really rainy. Before Christmas break, it rained so hard that we went home early one day. That's because Sharjah has no drainage system, and our school is on a sand road, so flooding is an issue. Rain day=awesome. So, every time rain is in the forecast, we hope against hope that it means no school. Craziest thing ever. Recently, it rained veryyy hard, but they didn't let us go home! Our school is basically open air, so the water just comes in onto the hall floors. Check out the pics below. It's insane. But the people just keep mopping it up, and no one decides to let us escape. Oh well.

The things I forgot about the UAE when I was looking through rose-colored glasses over Christmas break: The traffic: no one cares about you or where you need to go. It's drive or be driven over. The way that things don't get accomplished: Oh, don't worry, Dubai can fool you all and put on the best fireworks show in the world, but the lone copier in a Sharjah school breaks every other day. And a lone teacher has to walk through rain puddles in her hallway. Lastly, the impatience: I feel like over here I've lost almost all of my patience. It's so sad. But, here you just have to tell people how it is. No, lady, you cannot completely cut in front of me in the Baskin Robbin's line. The audacity!

But, it was so fun to come back home (my UAE home) and be reunited with my friends and get back to doing all sorts of Dubai things. Dubai never ceases to amaze me. Really. It is a sight to be seen, especially at night. When I take a taxi to Dubai, I love watching as I crest over the bridge and see the overpowering heights and lights of the city. Here, you can do anything. It feels like a dream. There are so many people to meet, so many activities to do, and so much fun to have. (cheesy, my apologies). Recently, I went to the Dubai Aquarium (pics below) as well as a few museums in Sharjah-the cultural center of the Middle East, no joke!

Well, I am happily re-settled into Middle Eastern life, sand and car horns and all. Enjoy the pictures and the tales. Talk to you soon.
*Side note: Sharjah has much better views than originally thought!
The flashy night pics are of Dubai Marina--the prettiest part of Dubai in my opinion
The rest are of my class-learning time, multiplication, and eating lunch outside!