Well, I dunt really nor 'ar ter rayt it dahn, sithee. 't i'nt ar ah normally talk, missen, so it's a bit on an effort to type it rayt way withart mekkin a rayt prat o' missen.

Pirate talk! All pirates come from Barnsley! It's so clear now.

We collected JZ at the airport and she has arrived safely home. There was a shiny pink bike waiting for her in the living room.

Wait...I didn't have a pencil handy. So Kristin wants somebody to rub nectarines on her head?

t tackletickleskwistin

Gid JZ love and adore her bike?

Anyone want to come over and rub my temples with fragrant oils and feed me slices of ripened white nectarines?

No, It's time for me to get some sleep, anyway.

But thanks for the idea. Andi will like that.

You still there, Hec?

Just thought I'd let you know the M's have got ourselves a pitcher again, and I just got home from his home debut and first win (see revised tag). Eight shutout innnings. 94 pitches, 69 of them strikes. No walks. Fastball topped out at 98 mph.

Knowing our luck his arm will fall off before the season is over, but if he stays healthy, consider yourselves warned.

Day three of my body thinking this is an appropriate time to wake up. We're going to have to have a serious chat about this, I think.

I feel badly this morning, though, because I came into the kitchen and started to make myself a bowl of ice cream, and I hear a quiet voice, "Val? Did I wake you up?"

Noipe. But apparently I woke Emily up. She was out cooling off in the living room. She doesn't have an ac unit in her room.

...okay. Wow. NOT the phone conversation I was expecting to have, today.

So I've been waiting for a phone call from my new employer or one of their representatives today, after an email yesterday. I'd been emailing them on and off over the past month or 2 asking about flight details from the UK to Cairo. It's only the past 10 days that I've been thinking "Come on, guys, tell me when I'm supposed to be leaving, already!" and my emails have grown a bit tetchier.

Yesterday I finally got an email from one of the Big Cheese guys there, telling me that there had been problems in emails due to the fact that they were shifting to the new campus. (Which I guess I could have figured out, if I'd thought about it. But I still wasn't wholly impressed.) He asked for my phone number.

So this morning he phones me. And I'm thinking he's going to tell me about the flight thing. Nope. Not so much. Instead he tells me that they're not opening in September after all. That they're delaying opening by 12 months.

...huh.

The reason he gave me was that there are power cables within 100m of the school, and that although this is legally no problem in Egypt, and although their American Architects were aware of this and didn't perceive a problem, they have become aware of (unpublished) research in Britain which states that it is potentially carcinogenic to have such cables within 100 metres of a school, and so rather than take any risks with the health of their employees or the children they were in the process of getting the things moved. But that this was not something that could be accomplished in 3 or 4 weeks.

So they're going to delay opening by a year.

Imagine my expression, ladies and gentlemen. Not unlike that of a cartoon character who had just been hit over the head with a log.

BUT, he tells me, they are honouring their contracts with the 17 members of staff they've recruited for the school. They will be distributing us between their other campuses, in Dubai, Cyprus, wherever, for 2005-2006, then bringing us together in Cairo for 2006-2007. But they knew that in the case of flatmate and myself, we'd be wanting to stay in Cairo, since we live there already.

Either we'll be working in the American sister-school of the place we were supposed to be going, if they can squeeze us in, or else we'll be "helping set things up" at the English school - dealing with parents, I guess, that kind of thing.

But they'll definitely be paying us, he says. And someone will be calling me wrt flights today.

stunned

Damn it. Either way this pans out, I'm not going to be teaching the British Curriculum next year. Which is a bit of a blow, I've got to say - I went straight from doing my Post Graduate Certificate of Education to teaching in Egypt, without even doing one year's teaching in Britain yet. I need the experience.There are pluses to having experience with the American System under my belt, undoubtedly, but it's not going to help me consolidate my skills and understanding of the British Curriculum. Which is a bit of a pisser.

Wow. Really, really not the conversation I was expecting to have.

Wow, Fay. Just wow.

I was so scared at the beginning of your post that you were going to say you weren't going to get paid. I'm glad that is not the case.

Yeah - a big yay for not having that unsuspected financial sword of Damocles suddenly drop on me. Believe me, I do appreciate that that didn't happen.

But - DAMN. I'm going to be either (a) teaching an unknown yeargroup in a system I don't know at all, and which will maybe undermine my existing understanding of how to implement the British Curriculum, or (b) not teaching at all.

And I'm not sure which is worse.

If it's (b), I'll do my damnedest to get work tutoring most evenings - ideally with primary kids, but if not then at least with someone. (We live round the corner from the Cairo American College, and my friend's friend has been living off the money she made tutoring the college kids in English Lit.) Which will supplement my income nicely too, of course. But won't really make up for 12 months of being entirely out of the classroom. Still, better than nothing, I guess.

Shit.