Another year over

My goodness the time has whizzed by. Here we are again in the 'winding down' stage of my second academic year here in Al Ain. I've finished teaching students and today I finished marking students' portfolios (or protfolios as they often say) and have input the grades into our fantastic computer system that works out everything for us. I do have one more exam to invigilate and mark though. Shaikha is coming in on Thursday as she missed all of last week's shenanigans with exams, IT open days, etc. She had a good excuse - she gave birth to her first child. She sent me a text and it's so precious I have to record it below:

HI MISS PATSY. HOW ARE YOU? I AM SHAIKHA AL MASOODI! I BROUGHT MY FIRST BABY ON TUESDAY. CAN I ASK YOU WHAT I CAN DO ABOUT THE TEST AND THE PORTFOLIO PLEASE?

I am always amazed by our students' ability to continue coming to classes right up until the day they give birth, and then return to class within a few days. I have no idea how they do it. It shows that college and completing their courses is a high priority. I also have to comment on Shaikha's excellent spelling and punctuation in the text. Let's hope she does as well in her exam on Thursday.

Aside from finishing off the courses that I've been teaching, I'm also in the middle of updating an in-house textbook that I'll need next September while juggling bookings for Australia. We're all in the throes of sorting out our lives here in preparation for fleeing the country for holidays and family reunions and hopefully cooler temperatures. This means finding people to look after animals and houses, plant watering, etc. It also means locking away valuables and finding cool places to store make-up, face creams, candles, etc as they will suffer if left in our homes in the heat of the summer. On top of that I've got the dreaded car reregistration to do this week. It's a bit like an MOT but less predictable. First I'll have to renew my insurance, which I hope to do tomorrow and then I plan to head to the testing centre at 7.30 am on Saturday. Cross your fingers everyone. Let's hope I can work out which queue to get into, where to take the number from and how to avoid being shunted over to the Ladies Only section, which is the equivalent of Outer Mongolia in the vehicle testing world.

Lastly, and I must dash to check on her before heading down to the Thai Spa for a much-needed massage (although I hope they don't wreck my back like last week) I have to make sure that the cat from the museum (sounds like a good title for a book) is settling into the college grounds where I surreptiously left her this morning as she is NOT a house cat and has been miserable in my spare bedroom, although happy to be fed 2 meals each day for the last 2 weeks. She didn't look very happy when I left her and I feel terrible. So much to worry about and so little time.