Gratitude is one of the most medicinal emotions we can feel. It elevates our moods and fills us with joy.

Ramadan Mubarak! It has been officially announced that today is the first day of Ramadan and fasting has begun. I learned that the fasting starts not at sunrise but actually from the fajr prayer, (first prayer of the day) which is an hour and a half before sunrise. This means that depending on where they live, some Muslims are fasting for 18 hours! I have a great deal of respect for Muslims celebrating Ramadan, especially this year experiencing the desert heat myself!

Here's to my first Ramadan in Qatar. Best wishes to my Muslim friends!

More facts about Ramadan that Google taught me:
-It's better to be a Muslim in Australia than in Iceland! The amount of daytime in Australia is much less than Iceland
-The fast is traditionally broken by eating dates and drinking water
-The end of Ramadan is on July 5 this year and is celebrated by a holiday called Eid al-Fitr, which is a day of feasting
-The meal eaten before the sun rises is called suhoor and the meal that breaks the fast is called iftar
-Qatari law states that you can face up to 3 months in jail and fined up to 3000 QAR (about $825) for eating or drinking in public. Hibernation it is!

I love this lantern. Such an awesome gift from one of my Muslim families!

 This past weekend I treated myself to a little getaway and went to Dubai for the first time! It did not disappoint. I think the entire cab ride from the airport to our hotel my jaw was dropped as I gaped at the buildings and roads all around us. Doha has a lot of catching up to do and I am not sure if they will ever reach what Dubai has to offer. I just could not believe how much stuff there was! Roads, overpasses, the metro, buildings everywhere- there were times where I forgot I was in the desert. Looking on the sides of the road and seeing buildings and things were so much more developed- not just mounds of sand on the side of the road!

When you go from this view outside your window... (BIG shoutout to the drills for waking me up promptly at 5:30 every morning!)

To this view from your hotel in Dubai! It was a nice treat for a few days. All that green...

Dubai is like a very advanced version of West Bay in Doha. Basically it is a westernized Middle East. In fact it just really doesn't seem fair to even compare the two. It kind of blew my mind at first to see people walking around in short shorts... and tank tops! You just don't really see many knees or bare shoulders when you are out in public in Doha. I think I know where I will be spending my next Thanksgiving!

Is this real life?

Found in the grocery store. Bacon!!

View of some of the buildings by the fountains.

This is The Address hotel which was the hotel back in the news months ago that was on fire.

 Two of the main sights that I saw in Dubai were the Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa. I spent around 7 hours in that mall and there are still parts of it that I did not get to. My feet were definitely hurting and rightfully so after my Fitbit informed me we did around 35,000 steps, or a half marathon (we did nearly 14 miles!). We admired the Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building in the world. It is 829.8 meters/2722 feet tall! At first when you see it in the distance you're like eh it doesn't seem that big. Then you start to look at it and compare it to the size of the buildings surrounding it and you're like wow that is massive. And then the challenge of fitting the whole thing in one picture. Of course we went to the top, as high as you can go, which was up to the 148th floor. It took two elevator rides to get there. The first elevator ride was one minute and they do a little projection on the walls comparing it to the size of other buildings in the world. The second elevator ride was 25 seconds. The view from the top was pretty impressive. In front of the Burj is the fountains and actually the way it was timed we got to see one of the fountain shows from up top. It looked pretty cool because we went up around sunset and they light up the fountains as they go off. We also saw the fountain show on the ground before we went up. They do one every half hour. Personally I thought the ones at the Bellagio in Vegas were better. You can't have everything Dubai! It was a great getaway and I cannot wait to come back.

Every mall needs aquarium right? We got to see them feed the fishies!

And a dinosaur to pose with. You can never be bored in the Dubai Mall.

A little different compared to the souq in Qatar! This one is inside and was mainly jewelry.

Burj Khalifa

Just a little tall. As if I didn't feel short enough!

Hanging out on the 148th floor.

 School wise we are in the final countdown! 13 days to go. Unreal. It truly is amazing to see the growth these kids have made in kindergarten. I've heard you don't really see that amount of progression in any other grade level. Which makes sense because some of these kids start with just sounding out each letter when I show them a sight word list to being able to read words up to a grade 3 level. And then I award myself a little dance party because all my hard work has paid off. 

So true! For the rest of the year for centers my teacup humans can switch on their own! Still working on lowering the amount of chatter during the transitions.

Next year is exciting because I will have some of the same kids again. I don't think I announced it on here but next year I am moving up to grade one! I love my teacup humans to pieces and absolutely love kindergarten, but there is still a part of me that wants to give it a try in other grades to compare and see what it is like. It's funny how much I fell in love with teaching kindergarten though. I remember how upset I was that I got kindergarten for my student teaching. But then fate was kind to me and gave me the best mentor I could ask for. Melissa is an incredible teacher and I don't know where I'd be without her guidance. Cherry Hill you don't know how lucky you are to have her! I have used so many of her ideas in my own classroom. And it blows my mind that she does it all on her own. No TA. And on top of it all she's an awesome mom that juggles all her kids' extracurricular activities. A big shout out to all the teachers that are moms. You rock! Meanwhile I am spoiled over here with my TA Ms. Iolinda who I think is secretly a mind-reader and I am going to be so unbelievably lost without her in grade one. I know whoever I get next year will be great, but no one will be anywhere as good as her. We make such a great team. Big shoes to fill!

My TA is very sneaky because she schemed with the parents and one of the other kindergarten teachers and they threw me a surprise party! She said she told the parents that we never celebrated my birthday back in September and that we should celebrate it now and a bunch of them were all for it and got it organized. It was a huge surprise and I loved it!

Cheers to one of the most thoughtful gifts. Teacup humans even made the cut! They were excited to search for their names in the collage. 

 Things are really starting to wrap up here. We had our last field trip where the teacup humans got to build creations with Legos a few weeks ago, music concert was last week, school pictures are coming out this week, parents are telling me when their child's last day is coming up- it is all finally coming together. It has been a wild and crazy year. One more year here and then we will see where life takes me. Just this year alone I have traveled to five different countries and it will be six before I come home in July. Germany I'm looking at you! Cannot wait to explore Munich and Berlin before coming home. This one is going to be a solo adventure. Everyone should travel somewhere on their own at least once in their life right? That's the philosophy I'm taking anyway. 23 days until I fly to Munich, 13 teaching days left and 36 days until I fly home. It's the final countdown!

This might need to be rewatched during Ramadan.