Adjustment

How I'm doing:
This Saturday marks week two of Aaron's first deployment to Qatar. I am handling it as expected, meaning that the first week I mostly moped around, felt sorry for myself, could not focus on work, and made myself a batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I like to consider myself a strong, independent woman, but when I don't get to talk to the boy I have talked to almost every day since I was fifteen, I get a little loopy. Good days are days I get a phone call and the first week was especially lacking in phone calls because Aaron was really busy. This week has been better though, there have been more phone calls and I have established a routine designed to drive me to a point of exhaustion on a daily basis so as to forget my husband's absense. I teach during the morning/early afternoon, grade, run errands, and exercise in the late afternoon, cook myself dinner in the evening, stare at my laptop and wait for a phone call between 9 and 10, and then go to bed by 10:30. The good thing is that these last two weeks seem to have flown by incredibly fast, so I invite the next 11-ish weeks to fly by just as quickly so that Aaron will be back where he is supposed to be...with me.

School is going well, although I have diagnosed myself with what I like to call "first year teacher blues," meaning that I feel afraid that I am not teaching my students everything they need to learn in a timely manner, and that I haven't learned to properly manage two different grade levels (one being elementary and the other being middle school) AND keep track of all their grades. My student teaching experience was with high school students, so dealing with younger ages is a new thing for me. Teaching them requires a lot more attention to tedious details like "put your materials here, skip a line on the paper, write you name and the date here, etc." Those of you who know me well know that I have never been an incredibly organized person and am particularly annoyed by tedious details...but I am learning, people! I love these kids and I want to give them the best English education I possibly can and that is really stressing me out right now.

Fun fact about Bahrain:
Dust. I am about to lose the battle with dust. Someday Bahrain will get around to paving the "roads" in residential areas, but for now, they are roads of dust. Which means that my house is always dusty. So if the dog happens to step in her water bowl and walk around the house, I come home to find my floors covered in small muddy doggie tracks. It gets so bad sometimes, that even though I sweep and mop every day, it is possible to slip on the fine layer of dust that is constantly coating the marble floors of my house.

The workweek in Bahrain is Sunday through Thursday in case I have not mentioned that before. Friday is the "holy day" here so church is held on Fridays, something I still have not grown accustomed to yet.

Maple:

Maple has taken to camouflaging herself in the rug