December 2016 – robinchartier

German Christmas 2.0

I have a blog problem that I discovered right before we left on vacation. A big chunk of my blog is missing photos (Egypt and early Oman) and I can’t figure out why. The albums where the photos are hosted by Google are empty even though I’ve never deleted anything. According to Blogger help, they only disappear when they are deleted by ME, but I’ve been too busy working and visiting with family to have done anything with my blog lately (as evidenced by my lack of posts). I have them all backed up on a hard drive here at home somewhere, but grrrr. I don’t want to go back and redo all those posts. Anyway . . . I’ll have to solve that problem someday in the future and in the meantime, pray that it’s just a bug in the system and that they miraculously return.

And now, vacation. We spent the day yesterday traveling from Abu Dhabi to Munich. I can’t remember if I posted about our plane ticket drama or just told people in real life, but here it goes. The Marine Corps is supposed to pay for a trip home for us in between overseas duty stations. This past summer we were entitled to a trip home, but Josh’s unit in Bahrain needed him to work right up until the end of July and his new unit in Abu Dhabi needed him to come immediately to start the job before August 1st. So we requested a delay of our trip until he could take leave sometime in the future and that was approved. We figured we’d use that plane fare to go on one last family Christmas vacation together before Calvin goes off to college.

At the beginning of November Josh submitted his request to have tickets purchased for our Christmas trip to Germany. The paperwork bounced around between Florida and Virginia and someone got a bug up their butt and started asking why he was even entitled to a paid trip at all since we had plane tickets purchased the previous Christmas — Ummmm, Bahrain and UAE are different countries. A move between overseas locations equals a trip. Look at a map. Read the travel regulations that spells it all out. Do your job. Hours and hours were spent on emails back and forth over the course of several weeks. Travel regulations were cited and the dictionary was consulted and people who couldn’t respond to logic just stopped replying. And I wanted to say, “Screw them!” or worse (this type of problem isn’t that uncommon, unfortunately. Reason #348 why we are looking forward to retirement.)

After praying about the frustration and stress that it was causing for Josh, I decided to get on the computer and see what I could find for ourselves. I had been eyeballing a direct flight from Abu Dhabi to Munich — travel time being of utmost importance to me when managing my discomfort with flying. Those tickets were $1000 each. Completely out of reach on our budget. BUT, Skyscanner showed the next shortest travel time via Oman Air. A 45 min hop to Muscat, then a 7 hour flight to Munich. For $367. Round trip.

I can talk myself through flying an hour backwards for that kind of savings. I hit “purchase” and told Josh to tell the people in charge of his travel paperwork to suck it. Freedom!! We will deal with them again come summer when we need them to pay for our trip back to the US, but I’m hoping that we’ll be dealing with a new crop of admin by then and they will understand how this Continuous Overseas Tour (COT) travel is supposed to work.

Merry Christmas to myself — I spent the entire day on airplanes. Compared to other Christmases of late where we visited the pyramids, swam in the Arabian Gulf or sat by the fire in our cave hotel in Turkey, this one ranks near the bottom. But in spite of my apprehension and the fact that I hate sitting on airplanes, the day went well. I wish I could change that about myself, but my previous phobia was so deeply ingrained that I guess I need to be thankful that I’m functional and only uncomfortable.

They were the best flights I’ve had in a while. The key to my success was upping my meds a notch starting a week before. I also made sure I was well rested and as stress free as possible leading up to our trip. AND this time I bought some big on ear headphones so I could block out airplane noise and listen to mindless podcasts and audiobooks, just as if I were sitting at home on my couch. I’ve tried to read or watch movies, but half the time I feel restless or spend more time looking for something to watch than actually watching.

Because we were flying on Christmas day our flight was only 1/2 full and I had 2 seats to myself. I could have had an entire row, but didn’t want to move to the back of the plane. The low point of the trip was waking up (yay, I slept!) only to find out that I still had 4 hours until landing. LAME. I’ve decided that some of my claustrophobia/airplane stresses could be solved by flying in 1st class or business class where I could lie flat on my stomach and actually fall asleep and maybe sleep through most of the flight. Maybe I should start a GoFundMe so I can test that theory.

We spent Christmas night in Munich and then took the train south to Garmisch the next morning after breakfast. Picking up some water for the train ride (sparkling water everywhere, yay!) I saw these huge bottles on display. Caleb thought they must be olive oil since that’s the only thing we’d ever see in bottles that large at home. Nope, the Germans just love their beer.

Now I’m rolling along on a train through the German countryside, typing away. Green fields, quaint German towns, and horses roaming the grassy hills. Not too many signs of winter, other than my orange puffy jacket.

I wish I could have snapped a photo of the graffiti scrawled on the side of a quaint Bavarian train station, “thug life forever.” Um, I don’t think so.

Arrival in Garmisch. Yay, there’s more snow on the ground this year.

We took a bus from the train station to our hotel, dropped our luggage in a holding room, and headed on foot to the ski lodge to be fitted for our ski and snowboard equipment.

We were told that we just missed the best of the snow in town — a rain storm washed most of it away yesterday. But glorious days like this are perfect for walking. They say there’s good snow up top, but we’ll see for ourselves tomorrow!

Bare hands can’t carry a snow crown very far without needing to stop and warm up

Last year she was nervous, but this year she couldn’t wait to get her skis, boots, and helmet. She’s still a bit apprehensive about meeting her teachers and her class, but she’s excited to ski.

We are ready to hit the slopes tomorrow. I’m really hoping for an injury-free week.

In the evening we went into downtown Garmisch and ate currywurst and drank mulled wine while we watched some teams competing in something that looked like shuffleboard on ice.

It may be the 26th, but it’s Christmas to us!

papers

Our Christmas vacation was almost a bust. It turns out that our IDs that were issued upon arrival aren’t just for show — UAE actually requires us to have them to leave and return to this country. I thought I had left them in a particular spot for safekeeping and then they weren’t in that particular spot on Monday morning when Calvin needed ID for something. I told him to use his military ID since that always works and why I’ve put these government issued ones off to the side.

Then I called Josh to ask if he knew where they were and casually said, “well we can still go to Germany and get them replaced when we get back, right?” And he promptly left work and we unsuccessfully tore the house apart for the next 4 hours. I guess I had misunderstood or misheard because he swears he told me all these stories about people who had trips cancelled because they didn’t have this particular card, but I’m not remembering it that way. Let’s just say he was about as mad at me as he was when I let the movers pack the registration to our car right before we moved overseas. He didn’t find my “alternative options” helpful or amusing, like coming back in as if we were tourists and then getting the embassy to fix it later. #illegal

Josh went over to the embassy to talk to the department that handles this type of thing. We both had our cards and were missing the kids’, BUT I have digital copies of them. Surely we could work something out, right? They said: “You need the original cards. You can not leave the country without them. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. The End.” Oops. #Mybad

Our only option was to find them. The alternative, which really wasn’t one, was to submit a request for new cards and hope they came back in 2 days (Since the original ones took a month, that had a less than 1% chance of being successful). The problem with submitting for new ones is that would effectively cancel the old ones so even if we did find our IDs in the house between now and Sunday, they would be invalid and then we still couldn’t go. But do we sit around and wait for them to show up sometime in the next 4 days when we’ve already combed every inch of the house? (Yes, I was even up on the 3rd floor, digging through camping equipment and stored linens. Nada.)

Josh said we had 90 more minutes to search while he went to a meeting and then he would fill out the paperwork to get the cards replaced and hope this hail Mary move and lots of prayers might get them processed in 2 days.

After lots of prayer, a few tears, and with only about 30 minutes to spare, I found them. They were right where I had left them, though the bag that I had left them in had been tucked in a storage crate under the stairs instead of on the coat rack where it normally lives. (I think our cleaning fairy was straightening up and she always tries to streamline and consolidate items. God bless her, at least this time it was no harm and no foul . . . just a lot of stress.)

What was lost has been found! Relief!

We are all packed to head to the snow tomorrow. Camille has been practicing her “pizza and french fries” (skis pointed snowplow and straight) like they taught her last year. We land in Munich on Christmas evening and take the train to where we’ll be vacationing and skiing on the morning of the 26th.

It’s 75-80 degrees here every day so we’re making sure we’re prepared for a wintery blast.

days of rest

I’ve worked for 2 weeks and now get 3 weeks off for Christmas break. I’m thinking that’s an ideal schedule and I’m a little worried that come the third week in January, I’m going to be hurting for another recovery break. Wait, I don’t get another week’s worth of leisure after successfully completing 50 hours? I might have to rethink this working thing . . .

But so far work has been enjoyable. I think the bigger strain has been that I’ve been working AND keeping up with our holiday schedule. On Wednesday I came home and put on my PJs at 6 and declared that I could not do One. More. Thing. and that the rest of the family was welcome to go to the International Carol service at church without me. (Something I really wanted to attend, but I couldn’t bear to leave the house one more time.) They all decided I had the right idea and joined me on the couch for an evening of nothing.

So what do I do at work? Well, a few kids in this world still read so there’s a little bit of looking up books, checking them out and shelving them, but most of my day is occupied with technology management. Every student from 6th grade on is required to have a Mac laptop. We have technology equipment in the library to support and reflect that emphasis. All these supplemental items are loaned out for a single day so I have checkouts and returns throughout my shift.

I give chargers to the kids who need a bit more juice to make it to the end of the day and there’s a non-stop run on headphones and phone charging cables. We even have 20 MacBooks that are loaned to kids who either forgot or have a broken computer. And God bless them, there are kids that make my absent minded crew look like I’m raising a bunch of Einsteins. Carter may have lost his camera for a month, but there are 3 other kids just like him. And kids who forget to bring back chargers for weeks, even with emails and texts to remind them, and then lose their borrowing privileges so we have to trade collateral for equipment. We usually accept phones or watches, but the most creative solution goes to the kid who didn’t have a phone so he traded a shoe for a power cord. He left it by my desk, returned to class, and we exchanged items at the end of the hour. He didn’t run out of power and the charger was returned. Win. Win.

What else do I do? I manage the cameras — 2 large cabinets of cameras of all types. Both video cameras and the big Canons and Nikons with zoom lenses. GoPro style sports cameras, tripods, etc. And they all get used. Kids film themselves for class assignments, teachers film foreign language oral exams, recording of holiday performances — the past 2 weeks the cameras have been in high demand. 25-30 have been in heavy rotation which means lots of work for me as I have to receive them, clear all the SD cards, and charge the batteries before sending them back out again. At first I felt like I was all thumbs, trying to figure out how to work each different kind of camera, but it’s quickly becoming familiar.

There’s also work related to the new school security system and ID badges with microchips and programming cards so that they work with the system. I can kind of do that, but will get a lot of practice in January when they roll out cards to the 9th and 10th graders. (Right now it’s just for Staff/Parents/Juniors and Seniors)

Nothing that I’m doing is rocket science or exciting to talk about (and why this post is such a snooze), but it’s good variety and I’m getting to meet lots of the teachers and students that my kids spend all day with. Seeing my boys (and giving them treats of chocolate for coming to visit me) is fun even if they also need lunch money or paperwork to be signed. I’ll take what I can get.

Talking about my job is much less interesting than doing my job (thankfully). After all this writing work, I’m feeling like it’s time for my afternoon Judge Judy nap. (Volume on, eyes closed and drift off to sleep to the sounds of my hero telling people what’s what.) Merry Christmas to me!

Wrapping up the holidays

Jan (a longtime friend who reads and comments on my blog) has faith that I’ll be able to keep writing AND work — after this week, I’m not so sure. I’m tired. The job isn’t hard, but it has technical aspects and a whole lot of names to learn so my brain is working in overdrive. Of course I don’t have to learn all the kids’ names who come into the library, but it makes the job that much easier since to check out an item I have to find the person in the computer system first and then scan the charger/book/computer to their name. And when there’s 20 different Ahmeds (some as a first name and some as a last) that complicates matters: “Which one are you from this long list of options?” and “Is it Ahmed or Ahmad?”

After work we’ve been busy with the typical rush of soccer games, Christmas concerts, and also grandparent bucket list items before Art and Barbara head back to the US this week. We’ve had tons of fun exploring Abu Dhabi with them and since they are only improving with age, they have more energy than 5 years ago and are keeping us hopping. They’ve got 30 years on me, but were game for kayaking yesterday afternoon, while I was ready for a lounge on the couch with the most recent episode of Survivor (#bestseasonever). But I rallied and we had lots of fun exploring the mangroves and watching the kids chase each other on the beach.

Other Abu Dhabi firsts: We went to the Emirates Palace for high tea.

And drank cappuccinos with gold sprinkled on top (the design in the foam is the hotel building with gold leaf at the base). She got a hot chocolate, but ate all my gold (and most of my sandwiches).

Thankfully Barbara took more photos than I did — my brain was still recovering from a training shift at work and I was trying to get enough food into a very hungry Camille before she went into an after school meltdown.

And once her tummy was full of scones and sweets, just like a princess in a palace, she fell fast asleep.

We walked back past the tree just as they were testing the lights for the tree lighting ceremony tomorrow evening.

We’ve also enjoyed a lot of family entertainment these past few weeks. Tis the season for choir concerts and we’ve had 3 of them already with two more to come. Calvin sings with the Chamber Choir and they are giving multiple shows: a tree lighting ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel this week, a school concert tomorrow night, and they were the musical entertainment at the school’s Winter Extravaganza this past Saturday.

Meanwhile, Carter was put to work by his Digital Photography professor. Earning extra credit for class by snapping Santa photos during the school Christmas event. (Not that this is shocking in any way, but Camille went nowhere near Santa.)

More singing — Carter is the only kid not in choir. After all the performances we’ve had this week, I’m really thankful for that.

We also had National Day festivities — an air show, fireworks, and an unofficial “parade” as people drove up and down the corniche in decorated cars for hours on National Day.

I saw the air show, but sat out the street party. Nana, Papa, Josh and the younger kids had a great time people watching and spraying silly string while waiting for the fireworks. I had a great time at home knitting, drinking coffee, and catching up on TV watching that I’ve been missing because of work.

They said it was a great time. I also had a great time. Win. Win. Win.

I think this photo best sums up our 3 weeks together. Priceless laughs and memories for all. We’re so thankful they adventured our way and we hope they will come again.

Working 12 to 5

I got a job.

I know right now my family is all, “WHAT?!” since I haven’t told them yet (meaning mom/dad/sisters — yes, Josh and the kids know — it’s not like I’m a housewife with a secret life once they all leave the house for the day).

I feel a bit sheepish admitting that I have a job. I kind of take pride in being different from everyone else and one of the ways I have been different for the past few years is NOT getting a job when all the kids were finally in school. It’s the thing to do: baby goes off to kindy and mama goes to work. It’s practically assumed; a cultural automatic next step. Cause what good are you if you aren’t earning an income? Last year one of the boys even asked “when are you going to get a real job?” before I set him straight that taxiing him to soccer practice, youth group and bringing his forgotten items to school was more than a full time job.

If I’m being perfectly honest, since I have zero paid work experience in the past 17 years, I always felt that an entry level job couldn’t pay what I felt that my time and skills were worth, so why bother? (Yes, you get 100% honesty here). Was I going to give up knitting and Judge Judy time for $7 an hour? Um, no. I figured I’d be happier volunteering or doing other unpaid work that left my schedule flexible for the foreseeable future.

Shortly after our arrival in Abu Dhabi I was approached by someone in the admissions office at the kids’ school who asked if I’d be interested in applying for a job opening in the front office. She was my point of contact throughout the admissions process and said she was confident that anyone who could complete 4 applications and all the paperwork required for that had the skills required for the job.

At the time Camille was crying daily and we discussed the idea that having me on site might make the transition easier for her, but when it came down to it, we decided it was too much, too soon. I needed to put together a resume, but our household goods (and printer) hadn’t even arrived yet. Of course I could have overcome that obstacle, but it was symbolic that I couldn’t think about a new step until I had finally settled here and wasn’t living out of a suitcase anymore.

Two months later a part time position at the school library opened up and the librarian asked Calvin, “Do you think your mom would want to apply for the job here?” His answer, which is so accurate makes me laugh every time I repeat it, was this: “I don’t think my mom wants to work, but if she did, it would be in a library.”

That’s totally me. I think libraries are magical places and browsing through stacks of books is one of the things I miss living overseas. And the not wanting to work part? Nailed it.

But I have a lot of I blank spaces in my schedule book these days and was spending my free time being aggravated by the way that my helper/cleaning fairy was doing things around the house. Like washing dark and light towels together, turning my cream colored things a pale shade of off-green and then putting them away damp. No matter how many times I emphasize, “they need to be DRY” she doesn’t seem to get it. I don’t know if she’s trying to save time, energy, or just drive me crazy, but Josh thought I needed to stop playing Towel Police, get out of the house, and at least see what the job entailed (and I will try and ignore the sickly colored towels and hope that it doesn’t happen again).

So I took them up on their offer to shadow the person I’d be replacing and woman I’d be job-sharing with to see if I was interested. In the 60 minutes I was there I saw two of my boys and several of their friends come through the library on their way to classes and to meet up with friends. I got big smiles and “Hi Mom!” and I knew if I was going to work, this was the place I wanted to be.

The next step was to construct a resume which feels ridiculous when my work history doesn’t actually contain any work. But I dusted off my creative writing skills and wrote up an impressive list of my volunteer experience from the past 4 years: managing, scheduling, coordinating, public speaking, implementing and all those other action words that I actually have experience doing from my unpaid job as our Kid’s Church coordinator.

Once that was complete the next hurdle was the interview. But wait, I had no clothes. Literally NO clothes that were appropriate for a job interview. Not a single pair of shoes that wasn’t flip flops or running/CrossFit shoes. And my collection of harem pants and yoga tops that were fine for school pickup, weren’t going to make a good impression on the Head Librarian and the Director of Technology.

So Josh took me shopping. I could write an entire blog post about how I’m a terrible shopper and act like a 4 year old, only pulling out the ugliest clothes I can find in my attempt at humor or the most impractical fuzzy coat sweaters that I really want to buy because grownup clothes are no fun . . . I’ll just say Josh is a saint and he has style. Lucky me.

I joked that we were wasting money buying clothes for a job that I wasn’t even going to get. Or that we were spending more money than I would even make at my job, but he told me to hush and just try on the pieces that he picked out. I complained that the pants were too fitted and the shoes all looked like something “grandmas would wear,” but he persisted and I came home with some office appropriate clothing.

I dressed for success and surprise, they hired me. I think the tipping point was when they asked me what made me a better choice than the other people they were interviewing for the job I was able to say that working a front desk requires the ability to multi-task and prioritize effectively and with 4 kids at 4 different grade levels and all their different activities, I can multi-task and juggle multiple projects like nobody else.

Or maybe it was the shoes.

I started work this week and so far, so good. Yesterday I was on my way to drop something off at one of the classrooms and a 6 year old torpedo honed in on me, zoomed across the yard, and bear hugged my legs with a big, “Momeeeee!!” Yes, Camille is thrilled that I’m working at her school. And Calvin has “directed studies” every other day in the library so I got to see him today and he helped me figure something out on the school computer while he was there. The paycheck may not be huge, but the payoff has been big.