No Steward...Big Wahala

Wahala = Problem

We had to fire Emmanuel our steward. Details aren't necessary, it was a tough thing to do though.

So now we've had to do the whole "real life" thing and cook for ourselves, clean for ourselves, iron for ourselves, shop for ourselves, make our water for ourselves, do our own laundry...you'd think we were living in the stone age or something. We've just about had enough of that so we went and hired a new stewardess. Her name is Regina and she's awesome. She spent all day today just cleaning our flat. It seems our steward wasn't doing too good a job of it before we had to let him go. Since she's been here, I've already stopped sneezing less and she seems to be a really honest person. Nevertheless, not having Emmanual around here when we come home from school has taken some getting used to...it was almost like a bad breakup for the first few days after.

Anyway, we've been really busy lately. We had to work this weekend at the Nigerian International Schools Conference hosted by AISL. I taught two 90-minute seminars on Lesson Planning with the Big Picture in Mind and have to say that Nigerian's are some of the most grateful people in the world. It was amazing how many head-nods and appreciative comments I got afterwards. We also have to commend Kara for her excellent work on helping to organize and plan the event. Because our weekend was so short, we're absolutely exhausted already this week. It's not going to slow down either; I'm taking 29 kids to Italy for a field trip. It's going to be 10 days of chaperoning 29 Jr. High kids. We'll be in Italy though so that should make up for it. Field trips are the worst thing ever as a teacher. It's great to go on field trips as a kid, but it's horrible for teachers. I see now why we rarely went on field trips in school...too much liability for the teachers!!!

Anyway, I hope everybody is well. Thought I'd throw a picture of my 2nd batch of tortilla chips. I learned how to make them from Emmanuel...tonight Kara and I made some Nachos from scratch!! It'll be fun to come home and show off our chip-making skills! Have a great day.

No Bullhorns Here

Earlier, in the Fall of 2006, we featured a young man with a bullhorn who ushered us into the first Saturday of the AISL Saturday soccer season. It is now baseball season at AISL, and needless to say baseball season is in full swing (bad pun intended). We have yet to be woken up by a boy with a bullhorn, and I have to say it's kind of fun walking around on Saturdays seeing kids wearing all types of professional baseball team uniforms. We have the Cubs, the Twins, and even the Mariners!! It's an immediate conversation starter with the parents of the Mariners who "sport our team uni's." I like this picture of Emily standing on third mostly because it's a great father-daughter shot. You can see David in the background...proud father, snappin' tons of shots of Emily. What he didn't realize at the time was that I was just phishing and caught a one-pounder! "Scotched!" See...scotched is another one of those terms that you'd hear in Nigeria...we're going to have to save that and "getting mo'd" for a rainy day. Maybe soon we'll take you through the various expressions you'd hear only in Nigeria...until then..."care you go."