March Madness

Well, before this month of March 2009, I would have told you that my last few months at Hope were the busiest of my life due to student teaching in Wyoming while living in Holland, working, teaching an oboe student, and doing everything "one last time" with my friends. I have now outdone myself! Here is a list of everything that I have accomplished in March, on top of all of my other committments:

• I sang the role of Angelina in Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury. This required me to go to the Ann the Tailor's half-a-dozen times to have a Victorian wedding dress made. Just searching for ivory colored taffeta was a sport in itself. There was none to be had on the entire island! Luckily, it was worth it because the dress turned out beautiful. I also rehearsed all of the high school students who were playing the part of my "bridesmaids", which required me to be on time to rehearsals, instead of sauntering in 5 or 10 minutes late...
• Al Raja School Drama week happened last week, with the 4th-7th grade drama on Sunday and Monday, and the 8th-12th grade drama on Wednesday and Thursday.
• I directed the musical "You Can Make A Difference" for the 4th-7th grade drama students at my school. This required me to stay after school three days a week, and come in on Saturdays. Still, I wouldn't have changed it for anything. I'm so proud of my kids. When we started rehearsals, they were already good, so you can imagine how they were by the final show! They rocked!
• The drama fundraising committee was very good at getting a company called Arteko on board with sponsoring our annual drama. They have a charity called Recycling for Charity, and they are starting to introduce recycling bins here in Bahrain. To any American or Brit, this will seem trivial. We've been recycling for nearly 20-30 years. However, here in Bahrain, people waste all the time, and there really isn't a formal recycling plan here. All that changed when Recycling for Charity opened up the first recycling bins at one of the grocery stores, Al Osra. They even invited our drama students to come and cut the ribbon. You know what that means! Field trip!! Get excited! So, I chose to bring the 9 principal characters. We were there for the press conference, and then the students sang the opening song of the drama for the entire press, and then they cut the ribbon on four enormous recycling bins. I was so happy about what this means for Bahrain, and that my students were part of it, that I almost started crying. Of course, they also performed really well, so that almost made me cry too!
• Our school had a "green day" to fundraise for the drama, and we all wore green and ordered Chinese food. (We also tried to get the students to recycle their pop cans and water bottles, but didn't necessarily make all of them understand what to do.)
• Four huge recycling bins were placed outside of Al Raja School, with the hopes that the school, mosque next door, American Mission Hospital, and National Evangelical Church will get on board and start recycling. We are also trying to get the surrounding community to bring their paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum to the school bins.
• I was also the assistant stage manager (Yeah, SL!) for the 8th-12th grade drama, an adaptation of The Tempest. With this experience, I now feel like I could actually stage manage for other things in the future because of my slightly OCD/type A personality.

As you can see, March has been a very, very busy month, but I have a lot to celebrate and be thankful for. Needless to say, moving to the former Soviet Union hasn't really been on my mind much this month; I've been too caught up in Bahrain!