[rewind] 7.7.13 - The Rough Start

   If you recall, we booked a 6 night cruise back in January and we have been anxiously looking forward to it ever since. Nicole had been checking for updates on our cruise constantly, and had been carefully reading every e-mail detailing important information about our trip. Unfortunately, Orbitz failed to send us the most important e-mail of all...

    On July 7 Dave was glancing over our paperwork one last time (which we had just printed) and noticed a "mistake". Our flight had changed by 9 hours, with an arrival time scheduled in Venice for 4 hours after our cruise was to depart. We frantically double checked our e-mails and confirmed that, indeed, we were never notified of this flight change. (Orbitz would later tell us that they sent out 5 e-mails with flight change notifications back in March...but they didn't). We were days away from our departure so we had to remedy the situation fast.

    To make a very long story short...

• We spent a total of over 10 frustrating hours (in a span of 4 days) on the phone with Orbitz customer service
• The only free-of-charge flight change offered to us was one that left two days earlier than planned
• Thanks to our hefty complaints for not notifying us of our flight change, we were able to get Orbitz to give us a $100 voucher to help with our new hotel costs
• In spite of the fact that we agreed to the 2-days earlier flight adjustment on July 7th, we were not given flight confirmation until July 10th (less than 12 hours before our departure)
• We successfully obtained tickets and flew out on July 11th, the day after the start of Ramadan (in fact, our landlord brought us our first fitr feast the night before our departure. yum)
• We promised ourselves never to book flights through Orbitz ever again

    Thankfully, we had no further flight complications. And in the end, we were actually pleased to have two extra days in Venice prior to starting our cruise. We will tell you how incredible Venice was tomorrow...

-David & Nicole

[rewind] 6.27.13 - Four Years

Hurray! We have been married for four years [and we are still madly in love]! 

[rewind] 6.27.09

     To celebrate our four anniversary we traveled to the Rabat Zoo where we saw two gazelles who were also madly in love. We didn't see the hippo though...because it had apparently run into its glass cage hard enough to crack it. Too bad... but it was still a great day.

 -David & Nicole

[rewind] 6.10.13 - Flash Mob

   We tend to neglect this blog during the summer vacation... so allow us to catch you up slowly. Our summer has been quite incredible and we wouldn't want you to miss anything. :)

   This will be our first entry in a series of "rewind" posts, which will culminate with our most recent adventures on a Mediterranean cruise. Before recalling the grand finale of our summer vacation; however, we need to first rewind to a date before our summer had even begun...

     I confidently thrived at GWA this year; and that confidence naturally put me into more leadership roles. June 10, 2013 is proof of the fact that I've been having an awful lot of fun in the leadership spotlight. :)

    All year long I had been posing the idea of a "flash mob" to surprise the students with. Nobody had ever done one at GWA, to my knowledge, and I considered the idea to be pretty fantastic. After mentioning the idea at lunch, a fellow member of the Character team suggested that it would be fun to do at the final elementary assembly. What started as this simple dinner conversation quickly turned into action. I sought out administration permission, planned the assembly date, recruited a choreographer (the other third grade teacher), scheduled after-school dance rehearsals, and sent out mass e-mails to remind staff members to come to practice. The flash mob was a huge success! If you're friends with us on Facebook, you can see the video here. Otherwise, you can drool over these pictures and wish you had been there to dance with us.

photo credit: MT

photo credit: MT

photo credit: MT

-Nicole

Lions, and Tigers, and Bears. Oh my!

    If you had been able to step into my third grade classroom this week you would have been blown away by their animal research projects. Each one of my students recently became an "expert" on an animal of their choice. Using post-it notes to aid their research, they had to explore various book/internet sources and take notes on their animal (making sure to give the authors credit for the information that they took). Their post-it note research was subsequently transformed into a five paragraph research report. This report was bound into a published book and includes an introduction, conclusion, sources page, table of contents, glossary, and illustrations on every page. To accompany the report, each student had to create a 3-dimensional sculpture of their animal. Finally, they each presented their information on their animals in front of their parents on Wednesday (from memory).

This picture was unfortunately snapped at the exact moment that the fire alarm suddenly went off (hence all of the confused looks on my students faces). I never had the opportunity to retake a group picture...bleh

A few noteworthy highlights from presentation day:
     *One student made an incredible parrot sculpture using a mango as the body. It was actually very creative and well-constructed. Unfortunately...the sculptures were required to be brought to school on Monday and presentations were not until Wednesday afternoon. Therefore, when I saw her sculpture for the first time on presentation day it had already started to rot, smell, and fall apart. Oops.
     *The shark sculpture is able to actually digest paper fish, and then puke them back out bloody. Impressive? I thought so, too.
     *Part of the Orangutan's speech: "Gentleman, you can look like an orangutan if you grow out your beard very long."
     *One mom was so pleased with how I have supported her child in class recently (with this project in particular) that she gifted me with a very beautiful, albeit expensive, Cacharel watch, fancy restaurant purse hook, and an injection pen. I was very appreciative of such a gift, but I would have helped her son regardless. I love the challenge of trying to get that boy to smile and love school again. :)

    Even though there is still 2 more weeks of school, I think it's safe to say that my first year of teaching third grade was a huge success. I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching this year and I'll be sad when it comes time to say good-bye to these kiddos. They are truly amazing!

-Nicole