Nap time in my lesson plan?

Apparently my class is this exciting! Might need to start scheduling in NAP TIME to my English class... Last year I had a BUNCH of photos like this. It is a hard life when you miss your midday snooze! 

Explore. Dream. Discover.

Building a school for old people ;)

Sometimes I love grading papers. I would quote my students all the time if I didn't think it would soon get out of control. Sometimes I forget there is a language barrier and when I am reading through things I have a good chuckle about the translation of sayings or words. You have to be able to smile while grading papers otherwise it takes twice as long. I am thankful for the unique papers with bright ideas because currently I am reading a lot of papers on an online source and without them I feel as if grading papers would be a miserable task!

Example from this past week -

The question was - "can young people teach older people."

The introduction was - "Old people are not, so what is the way to teach them?? do we have to build an old people school? or just leave them as they are without any kind of education level?"

Turning 24!

Today I turned 24 in the the land of the sand. Yesterday, I celebrated my birthday with great friends on a Dhow at the Island with the Doha skyline behind us. a day in the dun was followed by a night of dancing along with a friends debut singing at the RC. It has been a lovely birthday weekend! Weekends like this make me love Doha more and more. Fun times, great weather, drinks, sun shine, songs, dancing, and amazing people!

Checking some music off my bucket list - extremely excited!

In May and July I am going to be the happiest girl in the world! Not only do I get to go to a Gentlemen of the road - Stopover in July (IN THE UK which means I am going to go to LONDON this summer) but I also just booked my ticket to see Florence + the Machine in Dubai in May. Seems like a silly post but it is only because I am so excited!!! Oh and along with Mumford & Sons I get to see Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.


Now this is a magical musical post!

LJ DOES QATAR!

LJ came to visit for "Spring Break" and I sure hope she enjoyed it as much as I did. I am extremely happy and grateful that one of my American friends could make the long journey over to Qatar. It is a long plane trip for just a week but I think we successful used our time wisely! I love that I was able to show Lauren the real Qatar, hopefully, she won't return to the states and tell people I live in a tent and ride a camel to work. I love showing people what Qatar really is and the fun you can have here!

As silly as it may seem it was really fun to be a tourist for a week. I went to places that I normally don't go to because I wanted LJ to see everything and boy did we do everything... we made friends with come camels and some Bedouin children, had plenty of hummus, shopped at the souq, shisha, fun nights out, tanning alongside the beautiful Doha Skyline, the museum, reggae nights and beach bbqs, drinks at The W, sushi at Katara, cupcakes, horse races, endurance horse races, henna, and sand dunes. I am sure there is stuff missing from this list... we did everything there is to do in Doha.

The pictures to prove it -

Making friends with some camels and their owners :) 

Tourist photo at the Islamic Art Museum with the Doha Skyline in the background.

Fountains at the museum.

After we said no to the camel ride. 

Whatcha looking at?

Hopefully she went back with a tan!

Falcon shopping at the Souq

Arabian Horses hanging out at the Souq.

Souq

Shopping complete! 

Tanning on LJ's birthday. 

Dinner at The W was a must :) 

Birthday dinner on the beach :) 

QAWS Ball!

Henna

Lemon and Mint 

Economy Class

Desert Endurance Horse Race

Playing on the Sand Dunes! 

And now she has done it all! 

Camel Loving <3 

"Miss what is the meaning of?"

It would be a huge lie if I said that I loved every minute of the Jumpstart class that I taught for 12 weeks. I would have to go with loved it for about 98% and struggled with it for 2%. This was my first time teaching solo and I can honestly tell you a learnt SO MUCH from it, and SO MUCH from my students. They were all so wonderful and I loved having such a mixed, diverse class. Girls and boys together in the same class - everyone said this would be the hardest part but to be honest the hardest part was having a class of teenagers. It is impossible to keep 26 (but normally around 15) teenage students happy.

Some of the teenage moaning lines I have gotten over the 12 week class -

"Miss this is childish"
"Miss this is too easy"
"Miss why do we have to do this easy vocabulary" (most would get them wrong)
"Miss do we have to write can't we just talk"
"Miss give us an example" (so that they could just copy my example)
"Miss can't we watch a scary movie"
"Miss if you want us to give this speech you need to give it first" (to waist time)
"Miss 10 minute break is not long enough how about a 30 minute one"
"Miss I can't do the exam this weekend because I am going to the desert"
"Miss can you help me with my essay" (can you write the essay for me)
"Miss I hate this song... can we listen to Taylor Swift"(They didn't like Don't Stop believin' - weird)
"Miss we need more listening" (when I have a day of writing planned)
"Miss the video was stupid" (the video was filmed in Doha and it was not stupid)

I have kept a personal journal of notes about this class but I did not blog about them online as I don't know how I am going to do this just yet. I don't want to offend anyone? I don't want to cross any lines. There have been times we have all been laughing so hard I cry in class, or things I read that I want to share but I still need to think of my best blog move for these.

I am sad to see all my students go but I know that they will all be getting into a Qatar Foundation University so I know I will see them around soon!

Fady (Mr. Math) and me last night cutting up some cake for the students :) 

"The best English teacher ever" - To be fair I did tell them they were allowed to write nice things! ;) 

Quote it!

The Younger Years

When I was home in December Emily and I went through all the photos that she has been scanning. Last year we got my Mommy a really good scanner so that we could scan all our photos and have them digitally. I don't think I have laughed so hard in a long time. Some of these photos were just so funny! Emily and her faces, Evan has a lot of photos with food, and my nostrils are out of control! I have picked a few good ones to share below.

I can't wait until she gets them all scanned! 

A relevant quote...

"Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled." 

The Prophet Mohammed