Getting used to grocery shopping, teaching and living here

(picture of my apartment building-i live on the 3rd floor)

So the routine around here is to do shopping a couple days a week. It is taking some getting used to. You get your meat, veggies, packaged goods, frozen goods, house hold goods all at different places. I found a nice produce stand within walking distance of my house. Sometimes (Omer) has just fruits. Other times veggies of different kinds. So I get what I can and eat what is available.

I also found a little stand selling corn and bought some in the husk and some that was being grilled. The grilled corn smelled great..but the kernels were as hard as un-popped popcorn...not what I expected when I took a big bite!!

Oh and this morning at around 4:30 am the power went out and a big Habub came through. Thats a crazy intense dust storm. Seriously. Dust seeps in cracks through the windows that you didn't know existed. It sounds like a bad snow storm and looks like one only its the orange/red dust. I mean I could taste the dust as I lay in bed trying to get in my last minutes of sleep.

Then a big rainstorm came in afterwards. Luckily for us it stopped by 6:30 am when we head off to school..or it would have been quite a ride. Actually we may have just been late because I don't know how safe it is to ride in weather like that. So I got ready for school by candle light!

Have I commented on the driving here. I hear from other teachers who have taught abroad that it isn't as intense as driving in India for instance... but it is nothing like the states.
Its like the cars speed up when there are pedestrians. And there aren't many stop lights...and where there are lights people drive through reds all the time. Even though the lights have the countdown numbers around numbers 10,9,8 the cars drive off anyways. Basically when I'm in an amjad I look out the side windows or my blood pressure would be on constant high.
Just this morning we almost hit a woman crossing the street. She ran at the last minute and we slammed on the breaks.....it was scary!

School is busy as ever. I am working on testing the 3rd and 4th graders to see thier reading levels. Our school library is getting renovated and hopefully in a month it will be up and running. Once it is up and running I can work with the Librarian to get more good books for my students. Right now I have a hodge podge of books in the classroom and my students are reading from the the Pre-primer level to a 4th/5th grade level. Its crazy! But not abnormal. We have many ESL kids so its just what it is. I just take one day at a time cause its all i can handle. This week I'm just trying to test them to see where they are...then I can sort out reading groups and find the books for them.
There are a number of books that are outdated and culturally inappropriate for our student body..so finding books is also a special task in itself.

I am also doing 3rd grade math and the range of ability is just as vast as the reading. I have some kids who can finish 60 additon and subtraction problems in 3 minutes and some who can't finish 30 addition in 5 minutes. The school is transitioning from a text book driven school and has yet to adopt a set elementary math curriuclum. We (the Elementary team) are trying to get a program like Everyday Math or Bridges. In the mean time we make the curriculum as we go with the resources we have.

Speaking of which...I have to go and mark the math assesments..which I created so I could see what my students know and where we should start this year with math.

peace