Saturday, May 11th:
Today was a long day, beginning at 4am! It was raining as I walked to school, and of course, being 5:30am, there was not a taxi in sight! Thankfully a taxi came by before too long. Some of the students were already there when I arrived. John followed shortly after. We rounded up the kids in the main building and I graded tests as we waited for more to arrive. Almost right on time, we loaded up the two buses. John went with the "quiet kids" and I went with the c.c. on the other bus (funny thing, most of the students on the "rowdy bus" were my kids!) The c.c. joked with me later that I made the wrong decision by riding with him on the noisy bus - "You should've gone with Mr. John!"
The "quiet kid" bus :)
All of five minutes into our trek, the buses pulled over at the gas station. I hoped they were simply filling up, but as it turned out, one of the buses needed a new fuel injector! They promised it would take "only five minutes," but after replacing the part and driving another mile? we ended up waiting for them to bring a new bus. An hour and half after our original ETD, we were finally on our way out of Duhok. For most of the three hour trip, I reviewed spelling words with the kids. When I closed my eyes to try to rest a little, one of my fifth grade girls took off her cardigan and tucked it around me ... so sweet!
When we finally arrived in Erbil, they were waiting for us to begin. Our kids hurried onto the stage and the Spelling Bee was on! There were 10 students from each school per level. Our level one students (fifth and sixth graders) did pretty well ... we had one sixth grader make it to the top ten. Our level two students did much better. At the beginning there was some confusion about which list of words the students had studied, and our students were dropping like flies. When they finally got everything sorted out, our school competed only against the Sulymania school.
S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G B-E-E
In the level two competition, one of our eighth graders took first place! All of our students ran up to congratulate her:
John was one of the judges:
After the spelling bee ended, we were served a nice lunch. We ate quickly so we could get our students ready for the talent show. John and I were both judges ... it was a hard job. Not only could I not be biased for our students, I couldn't really offer them any kind of encouragement. We were also expected to make short, insightful comments after every performance. By the time all seven judges had made comments, it was hard not to sound redundant. And by the time I'd come up with something to say for all nine contestants, my brain couldn't think of any more adjectives to fit the context. (Guess I should've watched more American Idol...)
At the judges' table, narrowing it down to the final three:
All the contestants waiting to hear who made it to the final round:
Unfortunately none of our kids made it to the top three, but they all did a great job and I was very proud of them. Our students were also the best behaved among the three school. When we got back on the bus at the end of the day, I thanked them for being great representatives of our school and told them I was thankful to be a teacher from Duhok.
We stopped at Burger Queen and PJ's Pizza on the way home, giving the kids a taste of "American" food that they can't get in Duhok. And then began the long drive home ... I was exhausted. I closed my eyes, pretending not to hear their loud whispers, "Miss, Miss, Miss ... are you awake?"
The bus ride home:
Two of my sixth graders who competed in the talent competition and did a great job!
When I got home (a little before 10pm), I jumped in the shower, then collapsed into bed.
Sunday, May 13th:
Getting out of bed this morning felt like torture. After my workout, I felt a little more alive and then had some coffee (bad idea, since it left me jittery the whole way to school). I finally calmed down once I got halfway through my first session. All four classes took an extra credit quiz that included math vocabulary and the daily verses. Several of the kids had all of the sentences memorized and didn't even need to look at their notes.
When we got home, I rested for about twenty minutes, then worked on grading until my Skype call at 5pm. I got to wish Mom a Happy Mother's Day! Hannah had come down for the weekend. Since they were going to her church for Mother's Day, which starts later and isn't as far away, we were able to Skype for almost two and a half hours! At one point, Eithen came bouncing up to the computer, "Happy Muhver's Day!" I asked Mom about it. She told me that they'd been downstairs when she told him to come up and talk to Sissy. "She's here?!" he asked excitedly. "No, but she's on the computer." "Oh ... well I will go say Happy Muhver's Day to her." :) A sweet thought to fall asleep to...
