Packing for Poland

We celebrated Mother's Day a couple of months ago, the kids made cards and arranged to take me out to their favorite restaurant (hahaha..). It was Arabic mother's day, they don't know the difference and I'm ok with that. Then Mother's Day came around last week and they were ready to celebrate again.  Hey, who am I to squelch their enthusiasm for well..me? They were eager to buy gifts, but I had to convince them notes and something very very small would be plenty for me. It's hard when all I see is more to pack and ship.  They were happy with being allowed to choose their own gift for me and I always enjoy seeing what they think I'll enjoy. Mother's Day is on a Sunday, which is a work day in this part of the world (our weekend is Friday and Saturday) and it was particularly exhausting. I had planned to come home and cook dinner, but decided on the way home, I just didn't have it in me to cook.  That's been happening a lot lately, but I think it...

Current life situation. 

Showing off his bottom teeth missing! Best part of the gap between the two bottom teeth! Mommy enjoying lemon mint ice!                .           It was a LONG week.. I started off the week exhausted and it didn't seem to get better even with extra rest. It was teacher appreciation week, the last full week of school (Ramadan begins next week severely limiting our teaching schedule) and all grades were having their end of year party Thursday afternoon before Ramadan begins next week. In addition to the exhaustion that comes with a week of anticipation, the weather made a shift to really hot (104f/40c) and then a dust storm graced us at the end of the week making indoor recess the new normal. In addition, I needed to get all of my end-of-year assessments completed in order to write reports this weekend. That didn't happen.  With our less-than-normal schedule and the teachers also knowing th...

I've been doing a lot of thinking about our time here in Doha. I've been categorizing things into what I'm glad we're leaving behind and what I'll miss and a whole other mess of what's become normal (but maybe shouldn't be - I'll leave that for now). I don't want to spend too much on the what I'm glad to leave behind because it makes our time here seem less than it has been, but it's important to recognize there are downsides to every place and situation. So, here goes. 1) The climate. I remember telling friends before leaving (friends, you know who you are): yeah, it's hot, but we'll get used to it. And that we were coming from a very long and cold winter, where we were inside a lot, so this would be the opposite, but the same coping mechanism would apply...  Let me be the first to say, no.  Not true. There's something oppressive about the weather here. In August when we returned each year, the temperature tops out at 50 (120...