Why I want a man like my dog

June 23, 2006
Back in Newberg Oregon - the small town where it’s hard to go anywhere without someone recognizing you. I live in fear of running into someone I know, or who knows me, and go through that obligatory conversation…“how was Saudi?”-“good!” I hate these pointless exchanges. What can you say in 30 seconds, and longer conversations are futile in the grocery line. A lot of high school kids around town know me and I’m certain I won’t remember their names if I run into them.

The 2nd best thing about being home is seeing my dog, Phoebe, again. She actually cried when she saw me and ran laps around the yard in her joy. She loves me still although she gets a little panicky when I leave without her. She’ll need therapy on abandonment issues for sure when I leave again in August.


There’s nothing like the love of a dog. I’ve thought about writing a book called “Why I Want a Man Like My Dog.” After all, she’s overjoyed to see me when I walk in the door, she kisses me all over when I wake up in the morning, she obeys me, she goes for walks with me, she wants nothing more than to spend time with me…how can you help but love someone who loves you that much?









I feel like I’ve been going non-stop since I arrived. My brother & his wife, Steve & Mayen arrived the same day from the Philippines. We’ve had several family get-togethers, went to an outdoor concert at the zoo, watched two movies at the local drive-in movie theater, shopped, got my hair cut, went to a business meeting with my sister, etc. School seems far, far away and I don’t want to think about it or the many jobs I need to do while I’m here (taxes, workshop, etc.).

Detour

June 17
The flight back to the states started out when I left Cindy & Mathew’s, got on the streetcar and realized that I’d left my book at their house! Horror of horrors. I was facing a two hour train ride and ten hour flight with no book. The first train of the day back to Frankfurt would get me into the station at exactly two hours before my flight. It would be tight. As I sat waiting for my train, the loudspeaker announcement droned on & on. I thought at one point that it seemed like a little too long to be announcing the arrival or departure of a train. I started writing a “to do” list for the States and looked up finally to see that the station was vacant except for a train official who came up and informed me that there was an accident on the track and I must get on the train at track 7 and transfer at some other city. By the time I did that, the train was running 25 minutes late. We made up some time and arrived 15 minutes late. By the time I got through check-in, security, immigration, and a 2nd security check, the plane was loading. I don’t like cutting it that close. I managed to quickly buy a Vanity Fair magazine on my way to the gate that had a long article about Dubai. I didn't read much after all on the plane.

Just a comment about a little German culture shock: I saw this billboard several times in my short week in Germany. I did a double take the first time. You can see the man's pubic hair!! Quite the shocker after a year in Saudi Arabia. Maybe I'm becoming more conservative.

Castle Hunts and Bluegrass

June 16
Had a great time visiting with my friends from Philippine high school days: Cindy (Montgomery) and Mat(hew) Wyneken who live in Freiburg, Germany. (Matt likes to be called Mathew now but since I kept forgetting, I’d end up always saying it like two words…”Mat hew.”) They have three lovely kids – Cody and Niki (about 8 and 12) and a daughter, Rosalee, with epilepsy (4 years old).



Decided I was going to walk as much as possible since I could do it in shorts & tank top, and desperately need to lose some weight and get in shape. It felt so good to be outdoors wearing whatever I wanted. I walked from their house to Freiburg one day (a 45-min walk) and several other walks.


Mathew said he heard rumors of a castle somewhere up on the wooded hill near their apartment. I talked the kids & Mathew into going on “The Castle Hunt” with me one day. We found a hiking map on the internet that showed where the mystery castle ruins were and took off on the adventure on Thursday morning. Niki, who had been excited about the hike, complained a lot about being tired and her stomach hurting. We mostly ignored her thinking she was being lazy and melodramatic. After about one and a half hours of hiking, we finally saw the castle, up on a hill. It was bigger than we expected with tall stone walls (we thought we’d be lucky if it had 3 foot high walls left). There was a nice old chateau restaurant we had to pass to get to the trail up the hill. Niki complained again about being tired & her stomach hurting so I offered to buy her a soda before heading up. We went inside, bought the soda, walked out past the guest diners and she threw up…and threw up…and threw up. I felt bad. She of course wanted to go home, so we called a taxi and never made it to the top of the hill to see the castle. Big disappointment to be so close, but what can you do?

Mathew is in a Bluegrass band and they managed to sneak me into a big, private gig that had two stages and about 8 bands that played over the six or so hours. Again, it was so great to be doing things I couldn’t do for the last year, like listen to live music.

Fear of flying and flukes

June 14, 2006
I used to enjoy meeting my airline seat companions. I’ve been known for making friendships that last for years in those hours crossing an ocean. Now I’ve grown old and introverted and like my peace and generally ignore that stranger sitting next to me unless they start up a conversation. On the flight to Germany from Saudi, however, I sat next to 14 year old Saudi boy traveling by himself and felt a little sorry for him. He had traveled a lot but not by himself and the take-offs and landings always made him nervous, so I felt it my duty to get him through those with ease. My only idea was to talk or get him to talk. I found out a lot about him this way and he seemed like a real gem of a kid- he likes Americans, after all. Couldn’t be that bad. Spoke English fluently and had only been studying it for 3 years. He even knew what the word “fluke” meant when I told him it was a fluke that I won an office pool once in Bosnia, betting on the World Cup. It wasn’t actually a fluke, as I used the LuAnne-method of betting on the team with the cutest guy. In that particular case it was France...and they won. But I digress…

I must have made an impression on Qasim as he wanted me to sign one of the Lufthansa postcards for him and asked for my email address. It would actually be nice to keep in touch since I don’t know any Saudi families and I’ve lived in Saudi Arabia for almost a year.

Remembering 2006

June 14

There is no way to describe the joy and relief of finishing the school year. It has been a hard year – the first full-time teaching job – and I’ve heard that every first-year teacher feels this way. It truly is good to have company in misery – I am part of the “First-year Teachers Club” whose charter states up front that “first-year teaching sucks,” The interesting thing is to see the delight on the faces of the seasoned teachers as well at the thought of the school year ending, and to realize that everyone feels this ecstasy. Makes one wonder about a job that causes such elation when it comes to an end.

There is much to write about from this past school year, but it’s hard for me to re-hash it. Who want’s to think about the bad times of your life? So let me first think about the good times…
- Nick: my venting buddy who I knew would never breathe a word of anything I said if it was private. He was my personal 2nd-hand cook - he didn’t cook, but I enjoyed many meals prepared by his “man-servant” and many leftovers delivered to my door (thank you, Nick!).
- My students: the 11th grade class that I taught this year was fabulous. I loved almost all of them. The seniors were another story, but…I said this was about the good times.
- The teachers: there are some wonderful teachers. I just started to get to know the French teacher, Dania Charr from Lebanon, but she is moving to Jordon. I think we could have become good friends. Kimm Leeman, the P.E. teacher, was going to move back to Canada, but in the end they took a position at an Aramco school south of Khobar. The Woods were wonderful – very supportive when I felt like I was drowning. They are moving to China. We have about 5 Filipinos working in various capacities around the school and this has been fun for me. We reminisced about old Filipino TV ads recently and had a good laugh. Next year they promise to bring Filipino food to work for me. Yum. The truth is that I haven’t developed any close friendships with the teachers at my school, and haven’t spent the time it takes to form friendships outside of the school. Need to work on this next year.
- Yearbook – this falls under both good & bad categories. The seniors on the book were more often than not painful to deal with, but in the end, everyone loved the yearbook and gave it gushing praise. Felt very good.

Bad times…
- I’m a lousy teacher – I know it. Can’t deny it. Hopefully will do better next year.
- Some bad student experiences – the majority of the seniors in my Yearbook class sucked. There were a handful of good ones, but overall it was a painful group. Felt like it took half the year to get them to do anything. In the end, they worked, and I gave them credit for the book everyone praised, but it wouldn’t have happened without me. I averaged about 4 hours sleep a night for the month before deadline fixing all the thousands of mistakes and actually re-making many layouts from scratch. In the end, there were probably only 5 students I liked and will miss. Other “bad student” stories involve students who didn’t like their grade so sent their father to complain to the principal about me.
-gained weight from sitting on my butt grading papers or lesson planning every waking hour.
- my two school bags were stolen out of the back seat of a car with everything school related in it, including students’ unit tests and some major projects.

That’s it. I’m not going to think too much about it now for rest of the summer except for some nightmare teaching dreams I keep having.