Sorry to be MIA

Hi again patient friends and family

I can't believe how much time has passed since my last entry. Sorry to you all, especially Dorene, hope you are still talking to me!

Yes, I have been busy but the year started badly with my illness at Christmas. It took months to clear, very nasty bug. The doctor here thinks whooping cough but by the time I got to him it was too late to say for sure. Anyway, I struggled through.

My course is progressing, it has been much harder than I imagined. Not the technical side but just the workload and making the deadlines. I have managed to keep on track but only just, would love to get ahead and give myself some breathing space but I never manage it.

I have been doing the teaching part for two months now with wicked weekly deadlines and have till the end of June to go. Then it will just be the two last units and I will finally be able to relax.

I applied for a new job several weeks ago and have been accepted, just have to pass my course! Next September I will start teaching dyslexic children full time so I have a brand new challenge to look forward to.

Well, an update on the rest of the family is in order.

Jake had a good winter season with his rugby, his team finished second overall so it was a good result. He is now enjoying water polo, Dorene, I recall Sam was also into that. Jake loves it so I hope it continues next term. Jake has also been very involved with his drama, he recently sat his LAMDA exams (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) and is still waiting for the results. Jake was a big help with an English production that came to Dubai. It was a children's drama called 'The Gruffalo'. He helped with several performances, giving out sponsors material etc, he got to have lunch with the cast and his tutor was really impressed with his enthusiasm and maturity.
He is about to start his end of year exams but has been home sick for the last week. Poor lad has bronchitis, that is why I'm having this catch up here, because I came home from work early to be with him. Hopefully he will get back to school soon, it's a bad time to be away.

Grant has been working hard as always. He has just started the A380 course, has a couple of weeks here in the training school and then at the end of June he is off to France for 8 weeks. The good side is we will get to join him for a couple of weeks, the bad side it that he had to sign a bond for 3 years so we will be here in Dubai for a while yet!

Scott starts his GCSE exams tomorrow, he has so much pressure at the moment. He has some very important karting events right in the middle of the exams. Luckily he is very well motivated and is always studying (when not karting). He has been on the podium for every race this year and is currently leading the Rotax Max Series. This weekend he is back in Al Ain for the final (a night race) and he is determined to get a good result, big prize - so fingers crossed. We are using some airmiles points for two nights in a hotel so I'm also looking forward to some R&R for a change!
Finally, after two 24hr race meetings with lovely but not very quick teams Scott has at last been picked up by a top professional team. The 'Speedsters' came second last time and are focusing on another podium place. Scott was second fastest out of over 100 drivers in the last 24hr race so he is a valuable addition to the team. This race will be hard because the day time temps are now in the low 40's.

Home life here is just the same, too busy for anything interesting. The house is still the same. Daisy is still the cat queen! I'm still waiting for my pergola, we joke that the best I can hope for is to drape tarp over the old bent chassis and support it with all the worn tires!

Dubai has seen a few dramas, we had flooding after heavy rains that lasted 3 days. Schools were closed and it was quite serious for a while for some people. The only problem we had was the pool pump box got filled with water and the pump stopped working - not a submersible! So that cost us a new pump.
We also had the big factory explosion that happened as we were nearly at school and only about a km away. Very scary with a huge mushroom cloud appearing in front of us. The schools in the vicinity ended up being shut down because we were in line with all the fallout with ash and debris everywhere. It was caused by illegal fireworks, destroyed a 1 km square of factories and 10 people died. At least the schools did well with their evacuation procedures.

We are planning on getting back to NZ for a holiday as usual, no dates yet as we are on standby this trip. The general plan is that we have 6 weeks of school here to go, then I need at least two weeks to complete my course (not going anywhere with that hanging over my head). Then hopefully we can go to France for two weeks and then down to NZ via Dubai. We may only get about 3 weeks this year as I need to get back in time for my new job. Working life has its downfalls :(

Now I will make a super effort to keep the blog up to date, I may go quiet from time to time but I am feeling a little more in control of my course work just now. This will change in a few weeks when another batch of deadlines loom!

I have a mixture of photos that I will load separately just in case they muck things up.

Best wishes to you all - thanks for being understanding (and hopefully still talking to me!)