Christmas Fun!

I cannot believe that it’s already time for our winter break. As I was walking back to my room from the administration building today, I looked up in the beautiful clear blue sky and thought of just how happy I am to be here. The days aren’t always perfect, but I really enjoy my teaching and living environment.

So with Christmas approaching, our schedules have been pretty busy, just like in the States. On Thursday we had an appreciation lunch for all of our support staff. They really are great people and keep the school running when we think everything is falling apart. Here's a picture of us with the support staff . By the way, this is our "monster" table where we eat all of our suppers together. We have to throw the salt across the table. It's like playing air hockey.

Then on Friday night we had our faculty party at a local restaurant. They had decorated the room for Christmas complete with lights, a tree, and we brought Christmas music. We played a couple of games, ate a lot of food, played the “steal the gift game”, and overall just had a blast. We all went out to eat Korean on Saturday night because we had a guest in from our organization in the States. Then tonight we had a going away party for an adopted team member who was here for a few months learning language and is leaving tomorrow.

This brings up a HUGE request. We need your thoughts as people travel. First of all, tomorrow is the 1st day that Parliament is meeting, and come to find out, it is meeting just a mile or two from our school. There are lots of important folks in town for this, so traffic may or may not be moving and the airport, well, you just never know with Ariana. We have 3 people leaving tomorrow and then about 10 of us are leaving on Tuesday. The major request is for those traveling through Turkey because we are getting mixed responses from Ariana. Some people are saying that Ariana has suspended all flights to Turkey until further notice; others say they are going on as planned. I’m not having to deal with this, but about 3 or 4 teachers are.

So today I got a great taste of Christmas because my mom’s Christmas package came. Can I just say that my mom is the one of the most amazing women in the world. She sent a box full of things (all of them wrapped in Christmas paper and packed in Christmas tissue paper.) I got the box in the middle of the day during my prep period, and luckily our history teacher, Jan, was also on break, so he came over to watch me open gifts. I don’t think I could have waited, but I didn’t really want to open them alone either. It’s funny how excited I can get over soft Kleenex and colored Sharpies. By the way, the custom folks didn’t open one of the wrapped packages. Imagine that…. Usually they go through everything.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Merry Christmas!!! I'll post once more before I leave.