Since Sunday is our first day of the school week, why not start it with a field trip. Our grades 3, 4, and 5 were asked to select some of our best behaved students to go to the Science Festival in Abu Dhabi.
Field trips are a different experience here, to say the least. I am going to list the facts and then you can draw your own conclusion.
1. We were scheduled to leave the school at 8 am.
2. We left the school at 9 am. Abu Dhabi is probably an hour and forty-five minute drive on a bus.
3. Our first scheduled session was at 10:30 am.
4. We stopped halfway for one of the buses to get fuel. Some of the adults with us got coffee and snacks:) The driver of the other bus went inside to get sunflower seeds.
5. We were supposed to go to Yas Island but passed the exit.
6. On more than one occasion the driver seemed displeased with the person he was speaking with on the phone.
7. We arrived at 11:30 am and were scheduled to leave at 1 pm.
8. We did not get off of the bus until 11:50 am.
9. We did a really great activity using some of the items from the periodic chart and putting them under a buns and burner to see what color it would turn.
10. We were told we could look around the center when we were finished eating.
11. My students had just sat down to eat when someone announced it was time to leave. We were told the buses were waiting on us.
12. When we got to the area where we were waiting for the buses, we had to wait. Buses were waiting on us? Not quite.
13. We left just before 1:45 pm and ended up getting back to school just before 4 pm, and waiting till after 5 pm for some of the parents to pick up their kid.
14. Note to self: Think twice before volunteering to go on a field trip again.
Your own conclusion?
Monday brought another trip to the Zone to apply for the kids' health cards and Emirate ID cards. I had all the necessary paperwork to give to the gentleman at the health section of the Zone, and he sends me downstairs to get a 'permission to add dependents' form from someone one floor down. I kid you not, I was handed the form you see below that the man tore off of a stack of those same forms and wrote my ID number on it and the date. That was it. Didn't ask for anything from me.
I was told I could come back on Thursday to get Jack's and Millie's health cards, and their Emirate ID application would be finished Tuesday and I could come back and take it to the Emirate ID building across the street to get it, you guessed it, stamped. Then from there I can go to Immigration and apply for their residency visa. Yahoo! Now who wants to make bets on whether I get all of this done before we leave for the UK? Inshallah!
Tuesday, as we were leaving our apartment complex someone backed up to leave as well and failed to see me driving. Oops! So this is the second accident the Telfords have had since our arrival in the country, both of which were not our fault.
Tuesday's Zone visit was successful in that I received the application for the Emirates ID for the kids, went to the Emirates Identity Division and walked to the information counter and got the application stamped. STAMPS are starting to make me a bit nuts. We ordered our sofas after Stuart got home from school and will have them in 10 business days, at most. It will be nice not to sit on camping chairs, using Jack's chair as a foot stool.
On the car front, we have decided we are throwing away our money in the rental world. So on Wednesday we went looking for cars. There are some 'specials' happening right now, but we don't know if we will try to buy before or after our trip to the UK for Christmas. I will keep you posted. If you see pictures of shiny new car(s) on here soon, don't be surprised.
Thursday morning at Tabour (morning assembly) my students performed their presentation for National Day. Our theme was to have students select an occupation they would want to do when they are grown. We focused the entire skit and song around Vision 2030, which is the initiative we are a part of. We had police, teachers, doctors and mothers as chosen occupations. One of my 'police woman' brought this, pointed it toward my face and giggled. I actually laughed because she is the sweetest, most gentle child in my class. Only in this country!
In the states this would be a mandatory report and most likely expulsion. It was plastic and harmless, but still a bit disturbing.
At about 10 am on Thursday, it started to rain very hard. An announcement came over the speakers to tell all of us to get our home room students in our class and keep them there until they were called for dismissal. I love this country! It seems our brand new building is full of holes. There were leaks everywhere, scariest was in the electrical room. They had to turn all of the electricity off and we sent the children home. I thought that was reasonable until I learned that all schools sent children home because of the rain. Imagine it snows in Phoenix, about 8 inches and sticks. That was the reaction here. We had girls in grade 4 crying because of the rain. Obviously rain is a very rare occurrence. So I was at lunch with our PE teacher, Helen, by 12:40 pm. I picked our carpool kids up from school, returned them home, grabbed Millie, took my kids home, showered them both, mainly because Jack looked as if he had rolled in the mud at school, and went to get my UAE driver's license which took me five minutes. By 5:30 pm I was ready to start my evening. I felt as if I had gotten all kinds of chores completed and still had another day to do what I wanted. We ended up having Claire babysit so we could get some things done without the kids. Cathy came with us. Our intention was to go by Kia dealership and look at some cars again. We think the Kia is the best value for us at this point. Much to our dismay the dealership was closed, probably because of the rain.
Friday morning we got up, spoke with Grammies and Pop (thank you, God, for Skype) which is always a treat, picked up Miss Janet to come clean our house (super cheap and worth it) and headed off to church, late.
After church we went to the mall to buy a ladder and go help Cathy hang curtains. I, naturally, found something else to do....... I headed to the Souq to buy some rugs. The Souq is a little like crossing the border in Nogales. They expect you to bargain for sure. So I gave them what they wanted. After insisting I only had 700 dirhams for a one meter by six meter rug and a 2.5 meter by 3.5 meter rug that were originally stated to be 2000 dirhams for both of them, I was asked for about the 10th time, 'Sister, what is your last offer?' And, again, as he passed me the calculator to type my offer I typed 7-0-0. He stated it one last time and considering I had been in his shop for about an hour anyway, I begrudgingly typed 8-0-0. He said, 'Deal, Sister.' I am not sure who has told these Pakistani men that they should call women 'sister', but they do it.
After returning from Cathy's place we placed our rugs in the living room and hallway. They look awesome. They are not necessarily what I would have chosen at home, but are very nice an functional and only cost me $216. Hello!
We got up Saturday morning and because I can only assume some of you at home are doing the same, I decorated our Christmas tree. Yes, they have trees and decorations all over the place. The quality is not what we are used to, but the idea is there. We still need a few ornaments, but this has helped to get me in the holiday spirit, since up until Thursday it was still in the mid 90s everyday. 
We spent most of the day at home. In the late afternoon we headed back to the Kia dealership to see what kind of deal we could work out. The car we wanted was on the showroom floor. We asked to test drive it and there was a puzzled look on the salesman's face. Obviously that doesn't happen very often. He kept trying to convince us that we wanted a white car with light tan interior, when really the silver one with black interior was what we were interested in. Finally I had to make the following statement, 'If I am the one buying the at, shouldn't I be able to decide the color I want?' The salesman shut up and all was well. Most likely we will be purchasing the Sorento this week sometime, returning Stuart's rental car on Wednesday, and then my rental car on Saturday. I will be using taxis until the winter break and we will see how that goes. If it is an epic failure, we will look at buying another Kia at the beginning of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment