Finishing the Year

In about an hour, I have my first round of parent/teacher conferences for the year. I enjoy being able to speak with the parents that usually come, although it's most often parents who are involved in their children's education at home and don't really need to be there. Tonight, we go for two hours, and then tomorrow we are at the school from 9am-3pm. NO Kuwaiti parents would think about showing up before 10 or 10:30, so I'm going to take a book and work on my lesson plans for next week, and I've made sweet potato casserole and apple/raisin crisp for our teacher lunch.

Starting next Wednesday, we have a six day holiday (sweet, huh?). The kids don't come tomorrow because of conferences, Sunday is a test review day, Monday a test on MacBeth, and then Tuesday we watch the movie. It should be a relatively easy week, except for the test marking. Then, Chris and I are headed to Sri Lanka on Wednesday morning. We will be there until the following Monday afternoon, enjoying the only real vacation time that we have off together this year. Because he teaches at a university, the breaks are between trimesters, and we don't get a winter vacation together. *sigh* But, we are going to take advantage of the quality time we'll have near the Indian Ocean in just seven days!

After that, it's back to work for a few weeks, and then we have the immense pleasure of hosting our friends, Mike and Destiny, for four days. They've won the race to visit us, although it does help that they live in India right now. (See what they're up to on their blog.) After their brief visit, my friend Darlene and I are going to Paris for a week, then it's back to Kuwait to enjoy the last week of winter break before we finish off the semester.

I feel like I'm experiencing "planning pains" already...but it will all be awesome.