RAK Day 9-11 Tuesday-Thursday

Well lets start with Tuesday and the dreaded 4:30am pick up! OMG! That was sooo bad! It was like 3:30am and I was getting up thinking what on earth am I doing? Am I mad? But no this day was the team building exercises day! Fun Fun Fun! So we all met downstairs at 4:30am and were then driven by school drivers to school where we were met by the instructors..... who were all Fit! Proper well and truly Fit! Girls the day had just got better and it was only 5am! 

So we were divided into teams for the activities and as expected I was with Roger, but I was also with Paul (the sexy French teacher) and he was being really sweet, but then they split our group further and so I was no longer going to get the chance to suss him out!  But to be honest I was quite distracted by the instructors who were really nice! Did I already tell you that? LOL!

Anyway, we were driven to the Police Training Grounds on the Corniche where we would be doing our Kayaking! So we all got ready and headed down to the side of the river. In our teams we were then challenged to get all members of the group through a piece of rubber in the quickest time. We thought we had it but were beaten by another team, then the guys said that we were rubbish that the quickest time the day before had been just over 2 seconds. I knew then that my initial suggestion that maybe it would stretch round us all must have been right. So when we did this our team got the quickest time.

It was then time to get water shoes on and whilst doing this I found out that you should never pick a fight with a palm tree! I started to loose my balance trying to put the shoes on and managed to wack my wrist off the palm tree leaf. Probably your sitting there thinking yeah and big deal. Well put it this was it instantly drew blood and I now have a bruise which is around 3 fingers wide in both directions! So the moral of the story is that they might look pretty but their viscious!

Anyway, we went to the water and there was an odd number of us so I volunteered to go alone in the kayak as I’d done it before at LJS. So it was about 6am in the morning by now and off we went down the river. We played British Bulldog and I won Then we started to play tag with a ball and as I leaned to get the ball ..... yes you guessed it..... in I went! Well someone had to be the first to fall in I guess, but I wish it wasn’t always me! At least the water was warm! And cleaner than the Tees was when I fell in there! Anyway, we had a good laugh playing all sorts of games and then when trying to stand up on the Kayaks I ended up in a few more times! LOL! Unfortunately climbing in and out of the Kayak caused me to have a small asthma attack so I had to get the speedboat back to dry land!

When back on dry land everyone was coming up to check I was ok as they were worried about me, which was really nice. As soon as my principle found out he came to check up on me too, and then opened up about how he was also asthmatic and he’d found he needed his inhaler after falling in a few times the day before. But I thought it was really nice that he is so down to earth and cared enough to check up on me, and he kept doing so as the day went on!

I really find it so settling how much everyone here cares about everyone else and everyone is really caring and friendly!

So that night I got back and was still suffering from sunstroke which was what stopped me taking part in the mountain biking and climbing. But the guys at the place when we got back to their base kept feeding me orange juice with salt in, because they said it was obvious that my salt levels were low. But they were really sweet about it saying that I shouldn’t beat myself up over not taking part in everything, when I hadn’t been here that long and so was probably still acclimatising to what is extreme heat from the UK. I mean its nearly 5pm here and its still 42.5 degrees Celsius. So when I got home around 2:30pm I fell asleep on the sofa and woke around 8pm had some food and went to bed!

Next day we were back in meetings which departmentally were fine as Roger is laid back and pretty much giving me free rein to do as I want with the classes I have. I also got to meet Shammee (UPDATE: Shammi) who will be my assistant tutor with my year 7 tutor group. Who I will meet on Sunday!

Dean and Michelle arrived looking completely knackered, but it was good to chat with them. There are now 4 Mackums in the secondary staff here I did my best to give them help finding their feet filling them in on what I knew about shopping, phones, net access etc. Although talking to Michelle earlier today I think their finding the different pace between here and the UK quite a shock to the system. Thing is as I told them International Schools are a different world and so much more laid back about everything so they just need to chill out a little as things will happen eventually! But they seem happy enough and that’s what matters!

Today, was a planning day and so I spent the day in my room which now doesn’t have any chairs suddenly! But I got loads of planning done and have now completed a whole scheme of work for year 7 for the next 4 weeks, which will take us up to Eid break at the end of Ramadam. Chris has said he wants to follow my scheme not the old one and Roger said he liked what I had done! He also seems to have this false impression that I’m actually really organised! How wrong could he be? But I suppose I am being quite organised at the moment. No idea how long it will last!

Anyway, its the weekend now and everyone is going to Tower Links Golf club tonight. So I need to be ready for 7:30 when we’ll head out to find taxi’s! Need to make an effort tonight aswell as I’ve heard that R (a nice Ozzie guy) is going to be there and Tony told me that he’s definitely single so need to try and get some time to chat to him as I really like him. But at the same time I really liked some of the instructors from the team building exercise who are also going to be there tonight. This I know as I bumped into one of them in Carrefour last night!

So better go have a shower and decide what I’m going to wear! Might have a quick kip first though!

10:38 - Tuesday 25 May 2010