Sam's B-day

Hi everybody:

I am just sending a quick update. Thanks for individual emails. I just emailed Mom and Deb with a tentative summer timeline for Sammy and me, which has us arriving in CO June 12, spending much of July in MD and flying out of Colorado and back to Dubai around August 15. So it looks like we will have two months at home.

I had my 90-day professional review with my principal yesterday. It went well. He says I have a job next year. Of course I remain concerned about the low student recruitment-I still have only one student-and the prohibitive price of enrollment. Will there be a school next year? I believe so. There remains the challenge of a somewhat divided staff. There are really strong personalities on this staff. Some people have had different professional responsibilities in the past, and are bringing that baggage to the new job. Old habits die hard, sort of thing. Our CEO told me, "This too shall pass. Right now, you guys are like a bunch of relatives who have all overstayed your welcome in each other's houses. It will be better after the two December breaks." I bet he is right. That was A LOT of together time in that trailer in La Joya Bay before the school opened. Meanwhile, I enjoy my nice friends here, as does Sam, who now has four friends his age.

Sam Osius is having a great time with his teacher Rachel. He is learning a ton. I mean a ton. Double digit addition and subtraction, place value up to 1,000, he is reading more fluently, and she is tackling phonics with him, so he is learning how to sound words out. He is still a terrible speller, but they are working on that too. Essentially, he has a private tutor 5 days a week, and I think he will be caught up in no time. I am very proud of him, as is she. He is working so hard. Yesterday my son Sam, and my student Sammy, both made presentations on the UAE and RAK, respectively. They both had projects to present, and posters, and maps, as well as fact sheets on their assignments. Both boys did a bang up job presenting yesterday. Son Sam read in a tremulous voice, but you could hear him!

Thanksgiving was a very interesting, and super exhausting day. I was up at 6 a.m., and Sam and Rachel and I drove to Dubai. Rachel drove, because I hate Dubai traffic so much. She is an ex cop, so she drives really well. We found the Indian Consulate, and spent most of the day there. I will need to go pick up our visas this Wednesday, another all day affair. This would have been a painless process, if I had just had our residency visas here in the UAE. We were there the morning after the Mumbai shootings. I expected a weird vibe, but all seemed to be (extremely slow) business as usual.

Today is UAE National Day. Something like our July 1, without the beer and barbeque, I suspect. Sam is going to the beach with Neena and Rachel, and I have a day to organize before Lizzie arrives. Plus I need to turn my attention to planning next week’s Oman camping trip.

Back to Thanksgiving Day... We rushed home in time to get our eleven-pound turkey “Tom” in the oven. Then we cooked frantically. I had eight people. I have a picture of our dinner up on Facebook, lots of pics there, if you are in a position to check. We had a fantastic meal, and I slept like a log that night after the cleanup. Turkey has some natural sedative in it, doesn’t it?

One other element made the day unique. We had torrential rain here in RAK. Luckily this all happened after the trip to Dubai and during turkey dinner preparations. Sam was so excited he called the taxi stand where he is assistant manager, and Mohammed drove him up to the fort hotel. He always has his phone with him, and the General Manager, Mr. Nicholas, has taken a very fond and proprietary interest in him. Sam eats at the buffet free, whenever he wants to, and sometimes arrives home after his fort forays with a take-away box stuffed with buffet delicacies.

So, I was in phone contact with him when the fort went into lockdown. No one was allowed in or out because of the rain and lightening. Meanwhile, back at my building, Rachel and I were cooking like mad. Suddenly, lightening hit the building and the fire alarm went off. I called Sam, Sam told Mr. Nicholas, and someone came to turn it off. But all was wind, lightening, flooding and chaos. At this point, Sam was calling me telling me that he was sending Mohammed to pick us up because the building was not safe. I told Sam to stop making arrangements for me (!) and to come home in a taxi. So they let him out of the fort, and a taxi made its slow and careful way the ¾ mile to my building. The road was flooded, and Sam’s taxi got stuck in the flood! He was calling me all excited, saying, “Mom, I can’t open the door or all the water will come in!” We ran down, and a worker pulled him out through the window (the car was not buoyant, just stuck in high water) and delivered him to his mama waiting on the sidewalk in the rain. Very, very exciting for a seven-year-old boy, as you can well imagine. Bethany went downstairs and took photos, so when she puts them up on Facebook, I will pass them along. (Speaking of Facebook, Mom, Fred Lewis is my friend on Facebook. Don’t you guys want to join? Then you can see pics that don’t get sent to you directly.)


The next day, Sam turned eight, and I drove him to Fujairah for an overnight stay. We ordered room service for his birthday dinner, and the food came in a rolling cart with a heated compartment underneath. This was terribly exciting. My friends Neena and her sister Eda (both half Puerto Rican, Eda is the visiting sister from the US, and Neena works at my school) had a suite there, so we dined on their especially elegant balcony. The next day Sam took a paddleboat out into the Arabian Sea with Eda, and I sailed a little Sunfish around. We wrapped up our weekend with a little bit of pool time, and then home we came.

During my review, my principal told me that the way that he is proudest of me is that I had the courage as a single mom to come over here and expose Sam to this culture/experience. I am enjoying it, to be sure, but I have my professional frustrations, with a delayed start, and a class of one student! I do think the experience is proving to be very beneficial to Sam, most of the time. There are times when he misses home, family, and Kiwi and Daisy (Not necessarily in that order!). But overall, he continues to be pretty engaged in what is going on here. Let’s hope he is a better educated, more open-minded adult as a result.

Well, that is it for the latest summary. If there is a blurb I can produce out of camping on the beaches of Oman with friends, I will send it out in the next 10 days.

If anyone wants a personal correspondence, I have these lovely 10 days off, so send me an email and this time I will write back, I PROMISE. Right now I am not working 7:30 to 3:30 (with no permission to use email at work) and commuting 40 minutes each way, plus trying to exercise, and the usual Sam routine in the evening. So I have the luxury of time! Yum yum.

Much love, and hope you all are well, happy and enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday.

Lucy and Sam too