Still Here

No, my blog has not been closed down, as someone recently asked me. Life just keeps me going at full tilt. I'm going to mention here that I've quite the week of rental car company issues, but I'm really only doing so because I've temporarily stopped journaling, and someday I might be interested to remember exactly when this fiasco took place. We'll just say that one week and + or - 6 points on my license later, I hope it's sorted. We'll find out tomorrow.

Two and a half weeks of kids left. That's 13 days. The end is in sight (though I will miss some of them. It's true.)

~Nikki

Repeat.

My life doesn't slow down for more than a few hours. I'd like to say that I'm not complaining, but I'm not sure how this post could be construed as anything else.

My morning starts around 6:15 or 6:30 if the neighbors upstairs aren't too loud. Then I'm at school by 7:15. We were teaching until 2:20 all year, then we went to 2:30 for about two weeks, and now we're down to 1:15 because of the heat. You might think lucky me, but fitting seven periods and two breaks with a meeting or break duty 4/5 days leaves you feeling like you've spent the day sprinting. After that I do work in my classroom. I try and run home for about 20 minutes to get a quick bite to eat. Then I'm out the door by 4:20 to go tutor for an hour and a half on the other side of Dubai, which puts me home at about 7:45. I also just had a second tutoring job fall into my lap, which I was going to turn down, but it's on the way to my first one, and it's great pay for only two hours a week. So on Sundays and Tuesdays I leave by 3:00 to go tutor a local girl who's in Grade 1 at the Jumeriah branch of my school (there are four or five branches in the UAE).

After I get home I try and find food, and talk to Neal. Other than that, it's some combination of saying hello to my flatmate, talking to other people, maybe possibly but probably not doing laundry (that's seriously a once or twice a month event. If it's not dirty and it doesn't stink...), general apartment clean up, email, wedding stuff, reading and getting ready for bed.

Friday mornings (the first day of my weekend) I try and get out the door by 8:45, though it's usually 9:00 (which means taking the fast route with tolls instead of the longer free route) to head to church, which is, again, on the other side of Dubai. Between Friday Foundations (aka Sunday School), the service, trying to spend a little bit of time people over lunch after, and grocery shopping, I get home again anywhere between 3:00 at the earliest and 9:00 at the latest.

Saturday I sleep as late as I can (which my body hasn't been doing well lately. bummer), then I clean up the disaster than is my room, a little, do a few hours of school work, run errands that I need to, clean, and try and relax a little if there's time.  Which brings me back to Sunday. There's just no reset or redo button for another month or so. It's not the worst thing in the world by any means. The weeks are seriously flying by, and I am immensely blessed financially. It just doesn't leave much time for anything but the bare essentials.

Eat. Work.  Sleep. Praise God. Repeat... We'll see when I get around to the next post.




(Only 7 weeks until I go home!)