Conferences

So I'm about a week late on posting this. Not too bad, but I could be better. :)
The week leading up to Thanksgiving was three-way conferences aka parent teacher conferences, except here the students usually come as well. As I posted on Facebook....

Me: Your child has been acting really crazy the past couple of weeks.
Mom: About two weeks you say?
Me: Yes, about two weeks.
Mom: I know what this is. Child, go outside and play.
parent confession -- explains a lot

It made for two very long days. Conferences were 5:30-8:30pm. I could have gone home between the end of the day and conferences but I just stayed there. I knew coming home would just make it hard to go back and it's not like I couldn't find anything to do in my classroom. I'm so behind....  ugh!

The nicest part of working two very long days is that we got Thursday off, which just happened to be American Thanksgiving!! yea! (I decided to make my Thanksgiving post a separate post so it doesn't get too long)

Grades and Graffiti

I've fallen behind again. Sorry. Nothing much has changed or happened.  If I get feeling ambitious I may attempt to write a make up blog or two about some of the professional development that we have had, some things going on in the classroom, and/or a little shopping trip with friends from church where I scored an awesome clock with Arabic numbers. Chances are that won't happen so don't hold your breath. I'm just pretty much going to post about today and then try to keep up with posts better in the future.

Our first set of report cards were due this past week. Report cards suck to write. They're even less fun when your work computer is ancient and about to die like mine. We are getting new ones soon, but I could have used a new one last week. I wrote all of my comments in Word. Almost all of us do because it's easier to write and edit them. (we have to have a peer edit our comments when we're done, and then the leadership team edits them as well before the parents get them) When I went to upload them (copy and paste) into the system we have to sue I had all kinds of problems including a 10+ minute wait after every comment I entered. Each student has 5 comments. I have 22 students. Luckily, it worked just fine on a friends computer so I was able to enter them in there.

This week we have conferences. They do them a little different here. We have what they call three-way conferences with the teacher, parents, and student. It means two very late nights but we have a Thursday off (American Thanksgiving) and that gives us a long weekend so yea!

A couple weeks ago there was a thing in our staff newsletter about a graffiti workshop being offered today. I have never heard about a workshop or class to learn graffiti so I thought that was super cool. It was a little pricey, but hey, like I said, when do you get to learn how to do this? When I was thinking about things I would get to do while I was in Kuwait, learn how to do graffiti was not on the list. It's funny the random things/people that will come into your life.

My friend Sinae signed up and came with me. We were the only Westerners there. It was a lot of fun, really hard, and I would totally do it again. I'm a little surprised at how much I do want to try again. The instructor liked the way I did my bubble letters when we practiced on paper so that's what I did, but I would like to try something with more sharp edges and boxy next time.

I knew it would be awesome when I was greeted by these two super cute puppies. (In my world all dogs are puppies and all cats are kitties.) They practically jumped up and hugged me. 

Getting my doggy loves! 

We started out talking about different types of graffiti and then how to go about making your letters.

Then we tried on own and the teacher guy came around and tweaked them and gave us feedback. 

We each got a bag of spray nozzles and we could have taken the half empty cans of spray. I'm kinda regretting the fact that I didn't take any- although I still can't think of where I would use it....

That's our instructor showing us how to do it with the spay can.

I got started outlining in red while I waited for them to find yellow for me.

All filled in, which is a lot harder than it looks. 

I forgot to take a picture before I outlined it-- I'm pretty bummed about that. 

Before I added the highlight and apparently the ONLY pic I took of Sinae's work. What the heck??!

With the highlight and the squiggly stuff off the ends of the word. 

Final product. I don't like my tag-- I need to work on that. 

Other people in the workshop with their work. 

Pretty sure this kid has done graffiti before. 

This kid too. The two kids seemed to have done this before.  

This girl was cool. She's a graphic art student I think she said.  

This guy tried some stencil stuff with his. I liked his at this stage. He kept adding to it and it just got to be too busy- in my opinion.   

Sinae's work. One guy about had a fit that she was going to work in those shoes. He really wanted her to take them off.

And Sinae's final product. :) I think we did a pretty good job for our first time. We had fun anyways. 

Halloween

Well, I need to get this post up before it's just crazy old and out of date. The pictures are already almost two weeks old. I thought I would take more at other Halloween celebrations but I didn't, so there. This is all you get. I should have taken more because I LOVE Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. Followed by 4th of July, and then maybe Christmas.

Normally my sisters and I go all out on Halloween. Two years ago I did a very good zipper face and a very good zombie. We watch Face Off, a competition show for special effects make-up artists, you should totally watch it if you don't. We love this stuff!

Knowing that finding Halloween things was rather difficult in Korea I made it a point to get stuff before I left the US. The good news is I was right, it would be difficult to get Halloween stuff here. I haven't really been looking hard for it, but I certainly haven't seen it around. The bad news is the stuff I bought from the Party Shop is cheap and not very good. I have a better plan for next year.

We weren't allowed to celebrate Halloween at school. The rumor- verified from several reliable sources- is that the Ministry came to the school last Halloween because some super strict parents called them and the Ministry said we couldn't do it. I've heard- from people I know personally that teach at other schools and from other reliable sources- that ALL the other international schools celebrated it. It was sad for us because that was what almost all my kids put as the thing they were looking forward to the most in the 2nd grade.

I still celebrated-- 3 times. Sadly, I have nothing to show from 2 of the three events and nothing of myself. My church had a Halloween party the weekend before. It was a lot of fun and I LOVE everyone in my church. That's what all the pics are from. It was a real fun party and everyone had a good time. I had tried to do something cool with my make-up but it didn't work (crappy cheap make-up!) so I ended up having to just wash it all off and go with nothing really because I was running late. One of the best outfits at the church party: the non-member husband who came as a missionary. It was so funny! Loved it!

Then on Thursday night (night before Halloween) I went to a little party at the apartment building of some friends from church. He teaches at AUK (American University of Kuwait) and they live near the campus where there was a little Halloween party with a spook alley. I dragged a few friends from my school with me and it was a lot of fun. It was a little weird being so old and being basically on a college campus having a Halloween party, but I suffered the awkwardness so I could go through the spook alley. It was super quick, very cheesy, but they did have a couple of good jump out at you and make you scream moments. The party at my friend's place was fun too. Just a chill pot luck that was mainly for the kids to get to trick or treat in the apartment building.

Then on Halloween night my friend had a few people over to her apartment for a Halloween dinner. She made these cute rat meat loafs, deviled eggs with olive spiders, donuts with vampire teeth and other cute Halloween food. Sorry- I'm a loser and didn't get any pics of it. You're going to have to trust me that it was cute. The kids of the teachers trick-or-treated at all the teacher apartment buildings so that was fun to have trick-or-treaters. :)

All the pics are from the church party.

It's dusty!

Today we had a red day. A few days ago my friend Sinae alerted us to the weather report that there would be a dust storm and possibly rain on Monday. Well, we got the dust for sure, now we're waiting for the rain to wash it all away-- fingers crossed! Some time last week we had a little dust storm after school but it wasn't too bad.

Today it started around 11:30/12. The kids were obsessed with looking outside. I had to close the curtains to try to get any work done. One student informed me that he wouldn't be able to go outside because he's allergic to the dust. (this kid is allergic to EVERYTHING and claims that even the smell of nuts causes a reaction) It didn't matter because we watched as they put the red flags out indicating that it was a red day. A red day means that the dust is so bad that the kids can't go outside to play. So we had indoor recess.

It was still dusty when parents (read: nannies and drivers) came to pick up the kids. They were armed with face masks to quickly cover the kid's faces and I was transported back to Korea-- everyone walking around with a face mask. I need to get some and have them on hand. I didn't even have a scarf to cover my face when I walked home an hour later and it was still dusty.

The dust was so thick that I could actually look directly at the sun. That doesn't happen too often. Here's some pics.

the kids were only allowed to go out and buy from the canteen and come back quickly at recess

some of the dust in the hallways- I feel sorry for the cleaning nannies

some of my co-workers came prepared

the walk home

it's not often that you can look directly at the sun and take pictures of it

street light turned on because of the darkness and the sun in the background

I'm so fancy....

So my friend Sinae talked me into going with her and Sybil to a piano recital on Thursday night. I wasn't going to go because there was this principal's dinner that I felt we should be going to, but I caved and went to the recital instead. I posted a pic on instagram and FB but I thought I would post a couple more here.
It was fun to have an excuse to get dressed up and fancy, pretend I'm cultured a little. When we got to the Raddison- where the recital was, I could see this GIANT ship looking thing at the very back, right on the water. I secretly hoped the recital was there and happily it was. The hall was amazing! It looked like a big ship that was attached to the building. Inside was a big ballroom with tons of big chandeliers. The pianist was a woman named Sonja Park- Korean. :) She was AMAZING! I don't know much about piano, but I know what she played was very difficult and she played it very well.
My friends were a little sad that there was no wine at intermission. I enjoyed the fact that I knew I would be able to drink what they were serving- yea! It was just juice, coffee and tea. At least it wasn't coffee, tea, and wine- then I wouldn't have had anything. One out of three is better than none out of three.

the "ship" from outside

the massive doors leading to the ship/ballroom

the back of the ship/ballroom

the floors were amazing

during the recital

I thought this was funny--a no smoking sign in the bathroom. Love the translation

little by little

Today, the very little bit of "art" I have was hung on my wall. It's so nice to not have blank, white walls anymore. My "art" consists of a scratch-off travel map, (you scratch off the countries as you visit them) the word "TRAVEL" 3D box-ish made out of old maps, and a collage of pictures I've taken in various places. I like it. No, I love it. It makes me happy when I look at it.

I was able to fix the ugly brown couch issue. My friends had black couches in their apartment that didn't match with their decor- brown worked much better in their place. We were able to arrange a swap and we are both SO HAPPY with the change. I bought a couple of throw pillow... innards? Stuffing? I need to find good covers that will work with the room. The whiteness of the... innards... kinda works, but it's also rather stark. The throws will take some time and work to figure out.

I also bought a bed set so now my bed looks pretty. I need a few more pillows for that as well. The embroidery was off center as well which makes me unhappy, but after getting that bed skirt on there was no way I was going to go to the trouble of returning it. Too much hassle.