Tales from London

Good day,

Well, the Job Fair in London is over and we were very satisfied with the results.  We will keep our decisions out of this public forum to avoid additional problems at the school. We were traveling with another couple (Rob and Irina), also from the school looking for new positions.  Getting off the plane, we happened upon a 35-year, third generation deaf Black Cab driver with a lisp.  He had a great personality that just started off everything with a few laughs. We had an amazing time in London, seeing all the sights and eating everything we could.  The weather was very nice with a little rain each day and a chill in the air that we have missed during winter in Qatar (although we heard it was down to 4°C while we were gone).  What a great get away!  I think we visited 5 museums, Westminster Abby, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, the Eye of London, Big Ben and the Tower of London.  The last night we attended a showing of “We Will Rock You” in Piccadilly Circus – an incredible musical based on the music of Queen.  We ate great food and drank every kind of ale we could find.  Rob had an uncle in London that was also a Black Cab driver and he took us to dinner at a little place on the Thames – had some great roasted pork.  Slept in late and got home late at a small hotel/pub called Brooks Green in the Hammersmith area.  We traveled in Black Cabs, the Tube, and of course double decker buses. We went shopping at Hamley’s world famous toy store for …… guess who? Once again it was very hard to get back on the plane.

We finally decided to head to Phuket, Thailand for our February break.  Multiple people have told us that it was one of their favorite destination spots – especially those that dive.  We will still be trying to get Missie into the jungle to see elephants.  They do have some preserves there that would allow us to see them in a more natural environment.  Thailand has many trained elephants that are used for trail rides and entertainment – many of them are abused and injured in the process – that’s not what we want to support.  The diving is supposed to be top notch with a wide selection of dives – wrecks, sharks, and potentially whale sharks.  February is their driest month of the year so we are expecting good warm weather.

A little short this week, but we need to get back into the swing of things – and start a diet.

Lesson of the Week: A little expensive, but everybody needs to do London at least once.

Love to all,

Doug and Missie

Back on the Air

Happy New Year,

What an amazing Christmas and New Year with family and friends.  As usual, I apologize to those that we failed to connect with, but everyone is busy and running in different directions – we certainly were.  We will definitely be in Flagstaff for a while this summer and will try to see those of you we missed.

We are headed to London next week for the job fair and are already looking forward to the getaway.  We are trying to keep a positive attitude about the fair, but we have decided that unless something “exceptional” is presented to us, we are most likely returning to Hawaii next year.  We have already made contacts there and feel confident that we can both find positions.  We know that our chances of obtaining “good” positions at the fair have been greatly diminished by our current employer and their continued attacks on our professionalism.  We received a phone call from our sponsor at SEARCH and were told they had pulled the schools recommendations due to their inconsistency with other recommendations.  We were also told that since we will show a hole in our resumes, it is most likely the potential employers would contact our school’s representatives that will also be attending the fair.  No doubt they will continue to throw us under the bus.  Oh well!  Guess that means more sight seeing and eating of the local cuisine.  Hawaii will help Missie and I to regroup and decide what is next in our lives. 

We still have two more weeklong holidays before we pack it in and head back home.  Both of us would like to do a little Scuba Diving, but we haven’t decided where.  We have invitations to the Philippines, but are leaning more towards Thailand if we can find some cheap flights.  The back up will probably be heading back to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.  Either way, we are trying to keep our sanity by focusing on the next getaway.

I won’t go into details with school right now because I don’t see anything changing.  Many of the new teachers have begun to see the picture and the moral is gradually slipping into depression – especially for the ones that have 2-year contracts and are only 4 months in.

We have made contact with a new dive club here and it looks like we might get to do some local diving before the water gets too hot.  Even a bad day of diving beats sitting in the hovel watching TV.  When we get back from London, we will start trying to camp on the weekends just to get out of the house.  As the water warms up, we can swim and do some snorkeling at night – only time to see much close to shore.

I am putting the blogs back up so you can access them again and we can post pictures.  No since worrying about what was said at this point.

Lesson of the Week: Things seem to unfold as they are supposed to – we will know what is right when we see it.

Love to all,

Doug and Missie