Pleasant surprises to end a not so pleasant week

Last week was a pretty difficult week. There was an incredible amount of stuff going on, and it was very slowly overwhelming me until by Thursday I had reached my peak.

Tuesday began with an intramural competition, which was a great idea for getting the kids pumped up for sports and friendly (psh hah) competition. The only negative, however, was that we were not informed about this week-long class disruption until after they started taking our kids out of class for hours at a time. I was surprised to discover that chess was included in the games, and am still not sure how 2nd graders were able to wrap their heads around those strategies...though I guess it may have helped because all of the teachers pulled to judge didn't even know how to play the game themselves!

Wednesday we had a surprise (for me at least) field trip to a deaf and blind school. It was actually pretty interesting, but I think the kids may have been a little overwhelmed. They were super shy and seemed stunned into silence by all that they were seeing. We had brought sports equipment and balls to give to them, which was only awkward when one girl refused to give up her princess kickball...

In addition, the Secretary of Education informed us Tuesday she was coming Wednesday to assess whether or not the country would allow us to offer high school (funny fact: we already do!). So there was another little flurry of activity as everyone was trying to turn in lesson plans and update grade books.

Wednesday was also grade distribution for the younger kids, which meant the parents were going to be coming to school that night and so our rooms had to look extra good and spotless and intellectually stimulating! And because of problems with the system we will still inputting grades and comments up until 2 hours before the meeting. Not like that's stressful or anything though

And then the finale of the week was Friday when we had Grandparents Day, for which we needed to have prepared a song and a card and a craft. I did not know we needed to do this with both of our groups until Tuesday...And of course kids are not always the most reliable about bringing in the supplies you need by the date that you asked. Responsibility catches up with them a little later...

And to top it all off, I started after school tutoring and had too many kids of too many different levels put into my session. Plus it's no fun working 10 hours a day!

So there's my little rant :P

BUT there are always rays of light after the storm. On Friday we went out to dinner and because it was just that kind of week we decided to go big. Drinks, entrees, dessert, nightcaps, the works. It was actually a super nice but really cheap place, so it wasn't an unreasonable bill for the amount of stuff we had ordered. When the check came we all got out our cell phone calculators to start the painful process of figuring how much was owed by who, until the waiter came back and said "It's already paid". We were super confused thinking that something was getting lost in translation, until he explained that a gentleman seated a few tables over had paid everything for us. EVERYTHING. Whoa. Just because we reminded him of his kids going to college in the States.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't such a bad week after all ;)