As we are in the midst of the end of our working year (as teachers) and the beginning of the summer break, I thought it best to tie up loose ends, a sort of denouement if you will.

It has been a while

So I wish that I had a good excuse for my lack of blogging …

Life

Life is my excuse.

For any teachers out there, you know what the end of the school year is like.  Final exams, final grades, writing report comments, cleaning classroom (I am moving classroom next year), saying goodbye, getting ready to leave for the summer.

These are things we have to deal with every year.

April/May is also the busy time of year for my side hustles.  I mark exams and essays for the IB.  This year, I graded 220 TOK essays and 257 History Paper 2 so far.  This equates to a bit over $5K.  That is actually a bit lower than usual. (such is the business of life at the moment).  I also led an online TOK workshop during the month of May. I like helping out teachers new to the subject.  The $1650 was nice too!

Summer vacation

As I am writing this, we are on summer vacation.  I am sure that I will have a number of separate posts of our goings-on.  It is nice to have about 10 weeks off!

We have very little planned this summer.  Much of the time will be spent in an attempt to tie up more loose ends that one must do like doctor and dentist visits.

A more important reason is to visit friends and family.  (and use the free babysitters!)

We do plan to go to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at some point in July, and Lindsey is headed to Florida for a couple of days to get away.

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Like a baller

If you know me, then you know that I like to gamble.  A week ago, I headed to the MGM Grand Detroit casino with my mother-in-law.  I usually like to play Carribean Stud poker, but they have done away with that game at this casino.  I saw a couple of new games that I had never played before, one of which was a game called ‘I love suits’ poker.

You are dealt seven cards and the point is to get the best flush you can, no other hands are important (e.g. four aces are worthless).  The first hand was dealt and wouldn’t you know, I got a seven card flush!  I still hadn’t figured out the payouts. I knew it was a good hand (maybe worth a few hundred dollars), After the dealer qualified, I realized that it was a $3000 hand!  Very nice!

A true baller takes the picture in a bathroom stall so you don’t get robbed!

TwoTeacherTrek tip: Stopover in Amsterdam

WIth our lives as international teachers, we have the chance to travel quite a bit.  There are a few different flights to get us from Dammam to Detroit.  The flights with one stopover are either via Amman with Royal Jordanian, via Frankfurt with Lufthansa, or via Amsterdam with KLM.  Since the school is paying for the flight, the cost was not really a prerequisite for us.  We decided to fly KLM.

With the prospect of a 6 and 8-hour flight back to back with a 3-year-old, we decided to have a couple of nights in Amsterdam to break things up and recover from jet lag much sooner.  This made such a difference for us!  All-in-all, it made the transition back to Michigan much easier.  All flights out of Saudi Arabia are at a ridiculous time, so our flight to Amsterdam left at 1:40 am and arrived at 7 am.  We were able to recuperate from, basically, an entire night without sleep.

Another Twoteachertrek tip!

Since we were going home for the summer, we did have a lot of luggage with us.  Schipol airport does provide luggage storage!  It costs €9 per bag per day but were able to pack a small “Amsterdam” bag and store the rest without having to drag all of our luggage around.

Also, buy your unlimited travel pass at the Schipol train station because that includes your train into Centraal station.

Amsterdam goings-on

Since we basically only had one full day (and a toddler), we focused on doing things for him and relaxing.  We stayed at a great Airbnb in the Jordaan part of Amsterdam.  We chose this Airbnb because it was in a less touristy part of town.  Plus we had great views of the canals!

We spent a lot of time walking around.  We visited the Noordermarkt flea market, rode trams all over the city, had the ‘best fries in Holland’, and made sure to find a much-needed playground in Vondelpark.

Check out the pictures from our layover!