Isabella has two days of finals left and a last day of school to get grades and say " have a good summer".
Xela finished school on Friday, as construction starts for a 3rd floor to make more classrooms for more students. There has been a huge movement of more companies coming into PLC, the national oil companies of Spain, Italy, France, Norway, Russia among others have been arriving and of course, Chevron is bringing people in by the hordes. We are fearing what this is going to do to our rent....as these companies pay in dollars and pay big for any available decent housing. We, unfortunately, live in a building with lots of Chevroids, national oil companies like the French which means landlords start jacking up rents.
The upside is, the school is growing and up to 250 but cannot expand beyond until they get land and build a new school. This has taken years for the school board and admin, since Chavez started the reclamation of private land years ago. Clean land titles are difficult and if everything is not in PERFECT order, you stand the chance of losing the land and the money. So, it has now been announced that a beautiful piece of land will probably get purchased (will take a year) and in 3 years there will be a Chevron paid for school right down the street from us...on the ocean...with all the facilities and space for 450+ students. Who knows if we will see it, but maybe we will return for a high school year for Xela so she too can get a year of HS international schooling.
I have been tutoring two girls from Indonesia for the past 2 months which has been great. As it gets me on campus more often and I get paid some decent money. It is fun to teach one on one. Hopefully, the father will keep me on as their tutor for next year as they are in dire need of extra ESL support. The ESL dept has backed my proposal for me to set up shop at the school for private on-campus tutoring so lets see if it works out for more work for me. I finished up the year at the orphanage and now been getting ready for Prague, Vienna, Alps and Salzburg. Then PLC for a few days then HOME to Big Sky.
It has been a busy month for the girls. Isabella's middle school basketball team traveled to Maricaibo, Ven. for a tournament which they won. We were invited to the CIPLC graduation as guests of a Colombian family. The dad has worked with Victor for years and their daughter, Stephanie, is in Xela's class. It was a nice ceremony, then sitdown dinner and then music.....salsa, merengue and reggaton LOUD. We danced til 2am. Then awards ceremonies later in the week. The law in Venezuela is for all students to wear uniforms. Little ones are in red, elementary in white, MS blue and HS beige. The school had a nice little ceremony of presenting the incoming classes with their new color shirts.....so Xela is officially a BLUE shirt and Isabella is officially a BEIGE shirt (so ugly a color).. Then the MS/HS awards were given out. Isabella received Academic Acheivement Awards in Technology, Art, Social Sciences, Science and finally one for an virtual science fair inwhich 400 international teams competed and her team placed 3rd in Biology. She also won an award for sportsmanship, leadership and athletical ability called the Gecko Gal. (our mascot is the Gecko). This trophy was nominated by her peers.
This past weekend, we went to a bbq in which we met some interesting people who are actually NOT in the oil industry so that was fun. Then 6 teenage girls over for a pizza, night swim, cake, sleepover, pancake early birthday party for Isabella. Great group of girls, super silly, fun and polite. They mattressed the entire living room for the night.
As most know, we are staying for another year, which gives you plenty of time for a visit. :) One year at a time for us. We will be in BS for 3 weeks at Christmas and most likely all of June and July next summer if we decide on a 3rd year. If we did 2 more years, Isabella will have an opportunity to do two full years of Model United Nations (she did Jr MUN this year and went to Caracas, next year will be MUN in either DC, Philly or Chicago -MUN-Americas hasn't decided on a venue yet). She also is participating in GIN - Global Initiatives Network which is like Future Problem Solvers but for high schoolers. They will go to that conference in Lima, Peru. Also, the school is AP and for her to have that in 10th grade with one or two AP courses would be great. The school is very college prep oriented....they start PSAT and pre AP training and test taking in 9th grade. yikes. The other issue is being together as a family but going back to rotations is okay too. We meet people who have done 4-6 week rotations to places like Nigeria or Angola or even Libya which is actually much worse than victor's 2-3 week rotations fromPLC to Big Sky. So, simply cannot speculate about the future........
Alexa is off to Summer Dog Camp in 3 days. A farm up in the mountains with about 15 other expat dogs. The admin's secretary is a "dog whisperer" and LOVES dogs and she lives on 5 acres. She takes in the expat dogs and they have a blast together running around free all day chasing iguanas, lounging in the sun and pack-socializing. haha
Will try to keep up the blog on our travels. we shall see. Looking forward to seeing some of our friends in Prague who we knew in Caracas ten years ago....now the superintendent of the International school of Prague and his wife/kids and a teacher friend as well. small world.
