Potential Plans and Beach Weekend

So, the past week or so has been particularly stressful. Due to some news that we received I had started re-considering my plan to stay here for a third year. Because I save quite a bit of money, live quite the comfortable lifestyle, and Dereek is here, I had figured three years would be good and then I'd go back to the states. After my third year Dereek would just about be finishing his engineering degree, have a few years working in an oil company lab, and hopefully could get a job in the states and come back with me. Until then I figured I'd just hang out here, finish my masters, save enough money to easily have all my loans paid off, do some international traveling every few months, spend lots of weekends on the beach, and enjoy my generally small class sizes of about 7-10 kids. Sounded like a pretty solid way to spend 3 years, but now there has been some news within the school that will almost definitely effect class sizes pretty significantly, as in there might not even be kids in every grade. I won't divulge too much information for now since the news hasn't been stated to the parents yet; somehow this seems to be constantly pushed back a week, but I am pretty annoyed about it for a few reasons.

First, it obviously is messing with my plans. I've emailed some other schools in the area, and though, after talking to other directors I am reasonably sure I'd be offered a job, they only offer two year contracts. Three years is already pushing the amount of time I can go without snow, reliable transportation, and toilet paper... I don't really want to make it four. I'm also staying largely for Dereek, and that puts him 3 hours away and neither of us have a car.. I will likely just stay here because of this and take a nice relaxing year of teaching a couple kids. Maybe make some super cool teacher materials in my spare time and see if I can start making some money off TpT or see if any research is going on in the ESL field that I could contribute to. I'm trying to think of how I could use the free time I'd have here productively for my career, either in research or profit probably.

Second, I think what is happening isn't good for the kids. I was part of a committee that helped write the school mission last year and we did it with the kids strengths and weaknesses in mind so that it was written in a way that we could mold the school to meet their needs. Too bad what will be happening won't really allow for us to fulfill our mission anymore...

Third, parents are going to be really angry about this, and with good reason. Sometimes I think there are certain parents that do more for this school then some of the school employees. Pushing back telling them news that is of great importance to them seems highly disrespectful of all the work that they have put in.

Case in point, I'm annoyed, probably staying next year, but not necessarily excited about it. Since I've been super stressed about all this and it's put a lot of strain this past two weeks on what has otherwise been a really quite wonderful relationship, Dereek and I decided to go be cute and boyfriend/girlfriendy for a day at the beach. It was needed. We really had a great weekend of just laying in the sun, swimming, drinking pina coladas, doing a bit of shopping, and going out to dinner. If I can do that with him every other weekend next year, staying might be quite enjoyable. Check out some lovely pictures of our day.

Isla de Plata. Probably my favorite island.

Can't have a bad day at a beach like this.

Some people there were really talented with sand and rope.

Giant inflatable water games. Pretty sure it was 60 BsF for 30 minutes. That's less then $1.50. Whose visiting me?

Beach day pina coladas

Beautiful, but kinda crowded beach. Plenty of room in the water though.

Happy to have one not-so-stressful day

Panama Vacation

Last weekend we had to do a visa run, and the chosen place was Panama City. I was pretty excited that they were sending us to Panama since I've already been to Trinidad, Tobago and Grenada with the school and was hoping they weren't going to send us back to any of those places. Originally they wanted to send everyone to Trinidad so I was looking into going to Colombia, but they waited too long to buy tickets and Panama was the best option they had left, so Panama it was.

Our flights got changed kind of last minute so we left late at night on Friday and got back on campus really early on Tuesday. Our flight was supposed to leave at 10pm Friday, but that didn't happen. We ended up getting to our hotel somewhere around 2-3am. The hotel we stayed at was the Hard Rock Hotel and it was awesome. The place was huge with multiple restaurants, bars and clubs inside. We were lucky enough to get to stay on the 55th floor so we had a fantastic view of the city. Obviously, we just got there, marveled at how cool of a place we were staying, then went to bed.

We got up the next morning for a nice buffet breakfast then just relaxed and regained some energy by hanging out by the pool. The pool offered a great view of the city, but the water was really cold so we opted for having cocktails in the hot tubs instead. It was just overall a relaxing day of hanging out in our nice hotel. We did go out for dinner though in the old city area. The place was called Grapes and had great food. Unfortunately, Venezuela (at least where I live) does not have the greatest of restaurants, so it was nice to sit down and eat somewhere semi-fancy. The food was awesome and Patricia picked out great wines for us as well. Afterwards we all went to a small craft brewery. Though it wasn't necessarily my favorite style of beer, anything other than the watery light beer of Venezuela is a much appreciated change.

The next day we decided to venture out to the Panama Canal. The Canal was about a 20 minute cab ride from where we were staying. We got to watch a *really cool* movie about the canal and go through a museum. We were kind of bummed that no large ships were going through the Canal while we were there, though we did get to see someone's tiny sailboat go through the locks. It must be pretty cool to be that person who can now say they took their sailboat through the Panama Canal. Even though it wasn't the most exciting of places, there was no way we were going to go to Panama and not see the canal. Our original plan was then to do some hiking in a nature preserve nearby, but it started storming, so that was an activity that we never got to do, instead we had lunch and strolled around a HUGE mall. That night we had another nice dinner. This was Asian food and it was at a restaurant in our hotel. It was good, but I don't think it was as good as Grapes.

The next day was our last day in Panama. We all went and wandered around the old city area. It was very nice to walk around and do a little souvenir shopping. It was really pretty and all under renovation. In a few years more buildings will likely be open with shops and restaurants. If I get the chance to go back in a few years when restorations are done I would love to.

After walking around we all met back at the hotel to hang out in the hot tubs for a while. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1am and the hotel staff were nice enough to hold our bags and continue to let us use the pool area and common hotel areas all day. After some time in the hot tub Shannon and I decided to treat ourselves to massages right before the flight. This ended up being a great decision due to the stressfulness of our flights being so late at night. We were the two lucky ones who were relaxed, showered and clean upon getting to the airport.

The airport experience was not very fun. We checked in, went through security and went to our gate to wait. Everything was closed because it was so late so there were no stores to wander around in or anything. We all tried to sleep while we waited for our flight. Our 1am flight ended up not leaving until about 3am. We got into Venezuela really early in the morning, and went through immigration. After stamping in J, Shannon, and Nicola the immigration officer looked at me, then at the officer next to her and said in Spanish "Another teacher going to Anaco..." His response, "as a tourist?" She asked me and I said "yes." They both kind of chuckled, stamped my passport and ushered me past. Clearly, they know that we are not tourists and are in fact working, but don't seem to care at all.

Overall it was a good vacation. Very different than Trinidad and Tobago and Granada since there was no beach time and many more fancy restaurants and bars. It was nice to have a change of pace though. Yesterday and today we just kind of hung out in Anaco and tried to digest some news we were given at a teacher meeting. I think next week Dereek and I are going to Puerto to spend some time on the beach. A friend of his has a three bedroom apartment there right across from the beach and offered for us to stay there. Sounds good to us!

Also, I will be home for Christmas, but the spring visa run we usually do, I think I'm gonna come back to the states, and hopefully with Dereek! He spoke with someone who is going to guide him through the visa process and who said Dereek has a good chance of getting a visa. (he's gotten visas for other people already) As much as I love traveling, it'll be nice to have those two weeks at home and hopefully one of which will be with Dereek. =)

View of the city from our hotel window.

Hotel pool and city view.

Shannon, Patricia, Morley and I relaxing at the pool/hot tubs.

Lobby bar of our hotel.

Flight of beer from the craft brewery. Haven't seen a flight of anything since being home. And it was free! Free flight for the table to test the kinds of beers they had to decide what we liked best.

La Rana Dorada or Golden Frog

In the museum at the Panama Canal.

Museum

The Panama Canal

Watching a little sailboat go through the canal

Myself at the Panama Canal

That was the big storm cloud that prevented us from hiking in the nature preserve. It rained a lot.

Cool table at the Asian restaurant in our hotel

Matt and I with the view of the new part of Panama City.

Nice path that leads from the new part of Panama City to the historic part.

New section of Panama City

Morley and I

No beaches where we are, but I got to put my feet in water that is as close to the Pacific as I've been. This little bay connects to the Pacific ocean!

Historic section of Panama City

Cool bridge type thing

The city was celebrating breast cancer awareness month. The buildings in this area were also beautiful once they were restored.

Old and new Panama City

Pretty church

Old arch. 

Description of the old arch pictures above.

There was cool art everywhere

I liked these painted tires with plants growing in them.

Another church

Not sure what festival these devils were for, but they were in a sort of garage that had the doors open and two men sitting out front chatting. I asked if I could get a picture and they said of course and took a photo with Matt and I in it. =) 

Finished with first quarter

I've been pretty awful about posting this school year. I suppose this is because there isn't much new in comparison to last year and I don't want to bore anyone reading this. At the moment I'm pretty amazed that we're already done with the first quarter of school. I've been super busy with work lately since it's about report card times and CEIA makes us write a short essay on each student, which I'm pretty sure half the parents don't/can't read anyway since it's in English. Other than that I have a pretty big grad school project due tomorrow, but I finished it today and submitted because I've lived here long enough to never trust that the day something is due there will be internet/electricity.

Not all that much new going on, but school's been going pretty well. After school I've been tutoring one of my students two days a week and after break I'm going to start tutoring another one. Both have very minimal English and the one that I'm going to start tutoring is particularly far behind. Hopefully this helps. During the day everything's been good. We've been doing some pretty fun things and pretty cool projects. At the moment we're learning about animals and where they live so we're doing a big science project for that. We predicted what animals would be outside, then we went outside to do "research" and see who actually lived there, then we had a long discussion about which animals were easy to see and draw pictures of (iguanas) and which ones were hard (birds). We then talked about how we could maybe get the birds to stay in one place so we could see them better and after a lot of discussion the students came up with making bird houses/feeders, so on Friday I had them draw designs for them in their science notebooks. They came out really cute and it was really fun trying to watch them come up with ideas. Last week we also did tons of stuff revolving around Johnny Appleseed since September 26th is his birthday. Overall things have been good. I have cute pictures. And I leave for Panama in less than a week. =)

Marian doing some art.

It was Marian's fifth birthday in late September. She didn't do much in school, but she got to wear that silly hat all day.

This is our Johnny Appleseed writing craft. I thought they were pretty cute. 

We were learning how to count by 5s so I told them to use their hands to trace and find out how many fingers are in kindergarten. Then they were given apples and had to put them in groups of five to find out how many apples I had. 

Kenvi outside drawing what animals he sees in his science journal. 

Marcel hiding from the camera. 

Dominick, very hard at work drawing/writing his animals.

Carol, also very focused on what she is working on. 

Half of  my class trying to stalk an iguana to try and draw a picture of it. 

Everyone outside doing "research" 

We've been learning about mixing colors in art and using different things to make cool textures. This is one of our painting utensils.

Kenvi painting

A good example of our cool painting with different materials. 

That's about it. Wish I had more to say, but no news is good news I suppose. =)