disjointed

This week it seems like we made lots of arrangements: settled on tickets from the US to Israel, from Dhaka to Israel (via Bahrain and Amman), from LA to MN and back to LA, from Dhaka to Nepal and back (at Thanksgiving). wow. looks like we're going places!

Also submitted a proposal for a conference in November and now have to write the paper. It's on online teaching and literature.

Student-teacher conferences with Matan's teachers. He's really doing well, though stressed. Ironically, while he feels English and History are weak subjects for him, his teachers disagree. His teachers, for the most part, did not know that his schedule is so strangely divided among the different grades: 2 classes with freshmen, 3 classes with sophomores, and 1 with juniors.

My classes are going pretty well. The advanced one is more willing to work. The 2nd year class just doesn't show up when the assignments overwhelm them. This does not make the work go better.

We're looking for a bike for Matan.

Really happy to be swimming a couple times a week in an outdoor pool.

Started Bangla script class.

The real challenge this week: some kids from his school were in a car accident last weekend and didn't know who to call. Five kids were injured. Ambulances didn't come. Eventually they took the injured by car (passersby) which was probably the best of terrible options, esp for the kid with the punctured lung. The parent group was meeting on Sunday (anyway), so we grappled with what do we tell our kids to do in that kind of situation? How do we encourage them to call their parents? What numbers do we have for reliable help in an emergency? So now Matan and I do have phone numbers *in our cells* for the local recommended hospital and the Embassy's emergency line.

Halloween party tonight at the school.

If this entry feels disjointed, yes, that's the way this week was. And yet, it wasn't overwhelming. Just moving from one challenge to the next, step by step.