Category Archives: Fun
Summer and Kitchen Dreams
It’s getting hotter here in Dubai. I’m less likely to go and sit outside on the balcony during the day, and the amount of time we spend inside increases by the week. Flu season is upon us, thanks to everyone herding themselves indoors, and it’s about that time when our teensy-weensy studio apartment starts to […]
We just gave up the television
We just gave up our television. I mean, not in the physical sense; there is still a 50-inch plasma filling one partitioned wall of our studio apartment. Just in the digital, service provider sense. This morning, we handed in our decoder and said goodbye to recorded TV as we knew it. This isn’t one of […]
Great stuff about Dubai
It’s coming to that time of the year when living in Dubai will start to get much, much harder. Things are heating up quickly as we head towards the summer months, school (and exams and reports) will wrap up for the year in just ten weeks (already!?!) and we see another year gone by being […]
Flying Solo
It’s been a long time since I’ve lived on my own; some five or six years now. Back then, I had a flexible schedule: a blend of university classes, office work and eons of study. I had a townhouse to myself, my own car, and still managed to maintain a gym membership. I shopped, washed, […]
I really love the internet
A young girl sits sprawled across the carpet on her bedroom floor, a pillow under her elbows propping up her chin, and head tilted towards the open pages of the book. It’s her sixth book this week, and another library trip will soon be in order. She’s not too worried though; she has the special […]
Mud baths and motorbikes
I’m not sure about you, but I’d never shared a bath with seven others before. I’d opted out of the onsen experience in Japan, ardently avoided the hammam in Turkey and generally try to make my bathing experiences a personal affair. And yet, there I was, with all these newly found travel companions, sitting in […]
The Challenge of Travel Photography
Seven heads bobbed along with mine in the back of the minibus. There was a rare word spoken among us despite our guide’s attempts to draw out some semblance of conversation, which is to be expected at 4.30 in the morning. All eight of us were too busy looking at the light starting to paint […]
One more year of it
When I went hiking in Sa Pa, I met a writer – a real one. Admittedly, he’d spent the last two years teaching English in rural Japan, something else I would give a limb to do, but his actual field of work and study was to write, rather than teach. He was writing a book. […]
Fifty Shades of Cliché
In my English classes, my students are expected to maintain a reading journal, where they write responses to their reading. These can be creative responses, personal responses, analytical essays, or they may even comment on the style and nature of the writing and themes of the text. Either way, you find the students thinking more […]
Should Cinderella have gone to the ball?
Not exactly travel talk, but it’s all a part of the experience. Trust my students to turn a fairy tale into a discussion of rape, murder and the influence on children. I’ve either been with them too long and brainwashed them, or taught them too well…. A class essay created by the brains of 7C […]
A lesson in autobiographies
Here in Dubai, my students provide some of the greatest satisfaction of my lifestyle. Every day they astound me and I am constantly fascinated to learn more about their lives, histories and experiences. Most classes will have students from more than 12 or 15 different countries, with different experiences of travel and lifestyles around the […]
