dripping with passion

  ^^ our before and after airport photos! march 22 and june 9, 2015. ^^ Would you tell us how things ended up with your job? I believe you were teaching - what happened to your class for the rest of the year? sure! i transitioned from a teaching role to a school leadership role at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year, so when i left my job i luckily wasn’t leaving behind a specific class of students! i was, however, leaving behind projects that impacted students and that i had worked really hard on throughout the year and was sad to not see through. i did get to be involved in the recruiting and hiring process for my replacement, and i wrote a very thorough manual for my role, which was created for and by me before i stepped into it. all things considered, it turned out to be fairly good timing for a transition. i have been checking in on my former colleagues to see how things are going and am excited to hear of their continued success serving students. i will always be so gra...

we spent our last day in the uae in the emirate of abu dhabi. i feel like abu dhabi is the younger but actually cooler sibling of the glitzy celebrity of dubai. we totally loved abu dhabi, especially the sheikh zayed grand mosque, which completely blew us away. we took a bus from dubai to abu dhabi, and then headed straight to emirates palace, which sounds like a really cool governmental building but is actually just a super fancy hotel. we only had a few minutes before we had to get back in a taxi to go to church, but we quickly checked out the opulence – quite amazing. and then, we were so excited to get to church (the first lds building in arabia!) aaaaand no one was there. we failed to realize that church meetings are held on friday in the uae! i should have known to double check on this because i spent four months going to church on saturdays in jerusalem. we were sad we couldn’t worship there that day!     i am fairly certain that the sheikh zayed grand mosque was m...

one of the many perks of staying at the movenpick deira hotel is access to oceana beach club on palm jumeirah. a shuttle bus picked us up at the hotel and dropped us off at an infinity pool overlooking the ocean and the dubai marina skyline! ^^ yes, we are aware that we are really, really white. ^^ ^^ and that this picture is pretty ridiculous. ^^ we had such a relaxing and fun morning at oceana beach club! it was pretty cool to be on palm jumeirah, which is a huge man-made island shaped like a palm tree jutting out from dubai into the waters of the persian gulf and dotted with resorts and luxury hotels (only in dubai would something ridiculous like this exist!). oceana wasn’t anything too glitzy, just right. we swam in the pool and then in the ocean, which is super calm there since the branches of the palm island break the waves. while we were playing around in the sea, the boy’s wedding ring slipped off his finger! it was a true (and panicked) adventure to look for and a true mi...