Hello My Friends!

Greetings from Bahrain. I’ve been here 5 days and things are going fairly well. I can’t seem to find where I packed my chord to put my pics from my camera on my computer. Once I get more settled hopefully I will find it and be able to post some pictures. For now you will have to be happy with words =)

At the moment I’m staying in an apartment style hotel. The school is paying for 2 weeks. I also get transportation to and from school for free for these 2 weeks. I have been apartment hunting. I found a 2 bedroom 2 bath, unfurnished apartment in an area other teachers live in. It is called Tubli. It is between the capitol city, Manama, and the area the school is in, West Riffa or even Awali. Unfurnished here means LITERALLY NOTHING. No fridge, stove, cabinets, nothing. The apartment I found has full kitchen cabinets, a stove/oven, ac units in each room and curtains (the bathrooms have all the necessary plumbing). My other option was a fully furnished small studio that felt like a dorm room but had a fabulous pool. I opted for the two bedroom. It’s a lot to furnish but I wanted family and other guests (hint, hint!) to be able to visit me comfortably. As is typical there are a few snags in sealing the deal which is much too confusing and lengthy to go into detail here. As far as a pool goes I can join a “club” with a gym and a pool, hopefully. They are plentiful so it should be too difficult.

The school I’m at is called Shaikha Hessa Girls School, and the website is www.shgs.edu.bh. I have 23 seniors, most of whom are VERY behind in college applications and testing due to many factors. Because of H1N1 (haven’t heard the term swine flu since I got here, but H1N1 is every where) the ministry of education decided that no schools could be in session. When they decided school could start it was then one of the biggest Islamic holidays of the year. So school didn’t even start until mid-October. I’ve managed to get several things under a considerable amount of control in my 2 days at work which feels good and has kept me busy. There is still a lot to do but at least for the moment I feel like I know what I’m doing. Slightly neglecting the 9-11^th grade but I want to get the seniors squared away and on track before winter break. I have 2 more weeks until the next Eid, the next Islamic holiday. Lucky for me this falls over U.S. Thanksgiving so I will get to be with the family. After that there are only 2 weeks until winter break starts.

Right now a lot of things I need to get from the school to sign the apartment lease could be hard to get. I don’t even know if we will have school tomorrow or the next 3 days. The King’s uncle died and he declared all ministries take 3 days off from work. That was the last I heard when I left my carpool. Unfortunately my lack of Arabic skills makes watching the news difficult so I’m scanning the internet for English news which seems to be updated sporadically. Its possible school could go on, or we could have the next 1-3 days off and then it’s our weekend. Surprise! 5 day weekend! If that happens I’ll go to Saudi for a trip to IKEA =) If we have school it will be fairly empty of students. The school was started by the royal family (the 1^st Queen, as in the King’s first wife, I believe). Many, many of our students are in the royal family line and are required to perform certain mourning rituals (mostly paying respect I believe). Ten of our 23 seniors just for example. I’m just hoping somebody thinks to call and let me know…haha. If the carpool van doesn’t show up in the morning I will know for sure =)

So it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few days. This is getting long and it’s bedtime for me so I’m going to wrap it up. Feel free to email me, or download skype and we can set up a phone date. Hopefully a few pictures will be available soon!