Wednesday, November 28

On Sunday November 25, we took all the elementary (144 children) in 3 large buses to the Syed Darwish Theatre here in Alexandria. It is the Russian Ballet Season and the Karkov Children's Ballet Company was performing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. They were beautiful musicals. Several other schools were there also for the performances. Of course, on the way home we were caught in a traffic jam and we had to get all the children out of the buses and we walked them up Schutz Street to our campus. Even then we were an hour late getting the children back to school. But everyone made it safe and sound and the parents understand about the traffic.

On Monday, November 26 we decorated our Christmas tree in the dining room at Roy Hall where we eat dinner. We started at 7 pm and had pop corn to eat and warm chocolate milk to drink. We decorated several dozen sugar cookies that the cooks had made for us. We each get 3 dozen cookies to take back to our apartments for Christmas. We had a fun evening.

Yesterday and today Pat was called to sub for the 4^th Grade teacher. David (ESL teacher) and Pat pair up and we do the subbing together. The kids help and we had a good 2 days.

This Thursday, we have our monthly assembly. We are celebrating Walter's birthday. Our elementary is named Walter's Hall after the founder. Each class is preparing food in their classrooms and we will have our assembly at 11am then we'll eat the food the children prepared. Just hope no one gets ill!

Thursday night we are going out with the Grill Club to the Sea Gull Restaurant. The restaurant is located on the water and has many unique items on display – things you would find in old time amusement parks. We'll take a bus because around 20 of us are going. Another great night of fish!

Friday night we have International Night here at Schutz. Pat will be working at the Japanese Booth with another teacher from Japan. We will have crafts, etc. There will be several countries represented and each will have a booth and activities.

We start our Secret Santa the first of December. We'll each draw a name and throughout the month give your Secret Santa gifts and we will end it on December 18 with our Christmas Party for the staff. It was fun last year and we are sure it will be fun this year again to give and receive secret gifts.