we're halfway there

Officially halfway through the first teaching year in the USA. It feels like time is progressing fairly quickly. I have yet to cover India or China or really anything east of Iran but that changes this week. I had a teacher in service day where I went to training to learn how to god I have no idea what we were supposed to learn though I do know we were slated for four hours of training and got through it in oh let's say 45 minutes. Basically it was, " We have only three more hours training at this than you so don't expect much." That was how the training opened and from there it was pretty much here is a slide no need for us to read it to you. Next slide we don't need to read to you. Etc. The good news is I was happily home again by 10:30. So after some lesson planning and reading i find myself both caught up with work and relaxed. A nice feeling to have midway through the year. On a side note happy new year (china) and go pats.

travel

almost a disaster. I got to the train station to go the one place that the train runs here in KSA(Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and after presenting my ticket and heading towards the metal detector I was asked for my passport. I dont have my passport, it is with the Saudi Government. I have a xerox copy of the picture page and the visa page as well as a letter from my employer that explains that I am in process. All of these papers are stamped and signed by the company I work for. I showed these pages to the police officer and he explained that the papers were no good as they had not been stamped by the police. So I was detained for about 5 minutes while the two officers discussed what to do with me, it is apparently not ok for me to be walking around without a passport (or at least I guessed that is what the repeated mentions of ,"you must have passport" meant.) after 5 minutes of this finally they (the police) decided that I wasnt worth the trouble and let me go. they didnt send me back out to the street they let me go to the train, just strange. The coast was dirty and had few people. I am glad I went now I know a bit more about the gulf and what happens in KSA. I dont think i will be going back to that side again, too much else out there to spend any more time in a place that wasnt striking.

if you dont know me by now

And if you do you will surely know that I am no great fan of children. In fact I am much less than a fan I have found no reason at all for me to like them. And yet the reasons not to like them just keep piling up. So the island part of my vacation has ended, I'll get up those photos as soon as I get to my own computer again. And after a three hour ferry back to the mainland I had to wait for about 5 hours for the sleeper train to arrive, not that I am complaining about the wait, I knew well in advance what time the train would arrive and was thus prepared. However, when sold the ticket, I was not informed that the train car I was in would have a screaming, shrieking bundle of joy. I boarded the train at midnight and it was due to arrive to bangkok at 8:30 so I had 8 and a half overly joyous hours of that infernal thing screaming and crying. It wasn't constant mind you, that I would have been able to filter into constant background noise. Oh No this was silence interrupted every 45 minutes or so by the wail of a banshee being scalped. So I couldnt sleep as you may have guessed. And bangkok is still bangkok, big and dirty and without any place to get a reprieve from the noise. I will be back to zhengzhou in 3 days then in two more days my tickets are fixed for the train to beijing. I will take the day train and hopefully the "one child policy" will work in my favor and I will encounter none.