The Life of Schlief

In March, I was teaching about Business and asked parents to come in to talk about their personal businesses if they wished. One parent came in and talked about how he had a dream to save elephants, conserve the rain forest, and help those less fortunate. So he built 'Elephant Hills'. He has two camps, The Rain Forest base camp where the elephants live and you can hike and go on a kayak tour and another on camp on Khao Sok National forest. He built the first floating tent resort in the world! We were lucky enough for him to invite us as a gift for teaching his kids. On the first day, we went to the Rain forest base camp was beautiful and rustic. We stayed in a tent, but it had a bed and a bathroom :) We went to visit the elephants that afternoon and then a kayak ride down the river. It POURED on us in the kayak. Which made it even more fun! It was laughable how hard it was raining. The next day we went to Khao Sok National Park and took a boat ride out to the floating tent ...

Back to School - October Break 2017 in Dubai We returned for our second year at APIS at the end of July and it felt good! We knew what we were doing, what to expect, knew the kids, etc. There wasn't as much pressure or nerves this time around. We met the new teachers and already it felt like a positive year. My 5th grade class is stellar. They have great study and organization habits and just do what they are supposed to! More than half of the class is girls, so I think that helps with the behavior :) We joined back with our job searching company, Search Associates, in October to start the process again. We visited our friends Mary and Luke in Dubai for the October break to see if we could envision ourselves living/working there. We met with a couple of schools to get a tour and meet some teachers. We did a BigBus tour for 3 days to get our bearings and get off at all of the major attractions. The old city part of Dubai was what I pictured the Middle East. Dusty, yet colorful wi...