The news in four parts

1) It's official now and what a relief. We went into the school on the first morning everyone is back to announce that Russ will not be renewing his contract (it was a four month contract renewable for two years). We tried in so many ways for this to work, but what it came down to was not whether he COULD continue for two more years, but whether he WANTED to. We have learned a lot about this process, and from other teachers who have been in the international school scene for many years. There are great schools out there and not so great. Things don't have to be this difficult. The cons outweighed the pros, although the pros have been numerous. We loved our life here, just not the work part. The administration did not seem surprised at all as Russ had talked with them previously about the troublesome issues. In fact, everyone there has been quite understanding.

2) Our plan is to hit the road next week and travel through southern Africa for the next four months visiting friends and going back to the places we love, particularly Mozambique and Namibia. We also hope to get to some places that we have not been to before, like Lesotho and Swaziland. We feel we have been given a gift to travel without a schedule and hope to take full advantage of that. The laptop is coming with us and I will continue to blog all of our adventures. Just wish I could figure out the photo thing.

3) We will be back in the US in mid-May and look forward to spending the summer there with family and friends.

4) We will leave in early August for our new jobs at the American School in Kuwait (http://www.ask.edu.kw/ASK/index.html). We think this will be a much better fit for us and this was confirmed in talking to the superintendent. I will be the high school counselor at a high performing school with more students than I ever have worked with before. It will be a challenge but I feel that I am ready for it. Russ will be teaching Physics ONLY at three different levels, and he is also looking forward to the challenge. We never thought we would be in the Middle East and are excited about living in a different part of the world.

Things are busy this week. Once again, we are downsizing our belongings and simplifying our lives. Two tag sales in six months is heady. We both feel really good about it all though. A cleansing start to the new year. Speaking of cleansing, we finished a papaya for breakfast that we bought in South Africa and it was delicious!

Ok, that's enough to write for now!