Changes

I have just spent the day creating an overview for my curriculum. We are going to use the Aero Standards, which are often applied to overseas schools to help teachers align curriculum from one grade to the next. It took me 6 hours of nonstop Internet research, flipping through my teacher guides, and typing and cutting and pasting. I now have a reasonable month-by-month overview of my third grade year for math, science, reading, writing and social studies. It was a huge project and I am tired! I’ve planned on starting teaching in November, and if I have to condense curriculum more than that, I have a plan of sorts for each subject as to how to mush it even more. It is seriously challenging to figure out a way to cover a year’s worth of material in one semester, if that is what ends up happening. I am more thankful every day that Sam is in a school already. Even though a transfer will cause a disruption, at least he is learning now. The other set of parents who have not enrolled their two children are getting a bit frantic, and I am so glad I just went ahead and did it! Again, thanks to my sibs.

Yesterday was a watershed, turning point kind of day. In the last week or two, I have felt so frustrated. There was no end in sight to the school’s construction, teachers were fighting and snarking at one another, I didn’t yet have my own car, Sam and I got sick, and I could not get my second paycheck to clear at my bank. Then yesterday, my check cleared, so we have money again (Sam celebrated by having both cake AND tea at the fort in one seating. He also told Kulsum in the car yesterday a.m. before the check cleared that I didn’t have enough dirhams to buy him potato chips. She called me to loan me money and I had to explain the difference between Sam’s perception of our financial situation and reality, which was dismal, until the check cleared, but not THAT desperate).

Ryer also called in the evening to tell me he had bought a ticket to India. Yippee! Ted, I will send you his itinerary when I get it. He does arrive one day earlier than me, and I remember you all will still be out of town. Yesterday I also took the reigns of control over my broken oven and my Internet problems, and I went to Carrefour and Etisilat, the store and phone company who hold the keys to my respective problems. I made progress! Also, when I visited the school yesterday, it is clear that they are beginning to wrap up the building process, so I have renewed hope that I will be in front of a classroom in the not so distant future. Last, I drove from our office in La Joya Bay, to the new school ½ hour away, to the bicycle repair shop, to the bank, and to Etisilat and Carrefour and then back to Al Hamra, where we live, all WITHOUT getting into a car wreck or hopelessly lost. For the first time, I finally felt like I had a modicum of control in my life again, after total disruption. So, I am feeling happier and better, even without Alison’s dietary suggestions of wild salmon and blueberries, though I read the article with interest, Als, and will duly note the foods that help brighten one’s mood.

I keep meaning to drag a notebook around for a single day and write down everything that happens that is a cultural disconnect. It happens all the time, every day, too frequently to mention, but I don’t want to lose it all as I make the transition from what is not normal to what feels more normal with each passing day. I suppose this transition happens to every expat. The first few days after arrival are a total blur, then certain things about one’s day start standing out as being exceptionally strange, and then, over time, one just comes to accept it. My Italian washing machine, for instance. It was a simply unbelievable mechanism in the beginning, with its random wash, spin and dry cycles, but now I just wash my clothes and hang them outside on the balcony, like I have been doing that every day of my life. And Sam’s having a cell phone…seemed so strange in the beginning, but makes perfect sense now. He is extremely careful with it, and knows how to find numbers, and change the ring tone. Ditto for trips to the supermarket, with offerings such as quail eggs nestled in next to the hen’s eggs, or the boxed milk and Indian TV dinners. It is all just starting to feel more normal.

Ted, the consummate mover, always recommended suspending judgment for the first six months in a new culture where everything feels so strange and impossible to manage. It takes time and energy to break down a life and rebuild it again, but here we are. Instead of driving through the early winter snow to school with Sam in a car seat in the back, he puts himself into his uniform, eats his breakfast, and either scooters or rides his bike. We say goodbye at the elevator everyday. If I hurry out to the balcony, I can watch him down below, wheeling away down the street to the Khan’s house, (with his long blue shorts and RAKESS golf shirt, his “Civic Sisters” black backpack full of British Curriculum materials, front zip pocket stuffed full of dirhams to purchase the pseudo Indian/Arab cuisine he’ll eat at noon), where a different family puts him into a different car and takes him daily to a British School in the northern part of an equatorial, Arab country. Wow. I can’t help but marvel at all that can change in just six short weeks.

I want to be in better touch. I seem to be able to access Internet at home, so if you have a skype address, please tell me what it is. I am leadvillelucy. Mom, you said Fred set you up. Can you get the skype address and send it to me? I can’t yet talk computer to phone, but I can talk computer to computer.