EMAC Softball Tournament

I know it has been a while, but there has not been a lot to write about. This past weekend I traveled to Doha, Qatar for the JV boys EMAC (Eastern Mediterranean Athletic Conference) Softball tournament. The American School of Doha hosted the tournament. This tournament is basically the only real time for the softball teams to face competition. Our boys did play against
ASD (American School of Dubai) three times, but no other school is close enough to play. The teams in our conference included schools from Kuwait, Dubai, Doha, and Cairo, Egypt. Last year the boys softball team did not win a game, this year they did much better finishing third and winning 5 out of 7 games. It was my first time coaching softball, as I am used to baseball, but it was a pretty easy adjustment. There has been talk about moving to baseball in the next couple of
years, but who knows what will happen. Tanya is coaching the badminton team and is at their conference tournament in Kuwait at the American School of Kuwait. I hope to talk with many of you soon, as school will be wrapping up in the next month and a half. Take care.

Oman Vacation

Hi everyone!

I know again we haven't been updating the good old blog. But we have a better excuse this time! We were on spring break and went to Oman for 4 days with friends! The video highlights some of the great places we went. We left on Monday with our friends Paul and Lisa. They work at ACS too, Paul is a high school math teacher and Lisa is a middle school Spanish teacher. Paul is from Iowa and Lisa Chicago so we were in good company of the mid-westerners.

The first night we camped at Wadi Damm, this was a great place for swimming, and for the boys jumping off big rocks. We didn't have any good fire wood just some dead palms that burn very quickly. But we had a full moon so we played cards by the moon light, it was really bright! The next day we drove to Jabel Shams, Oman's Grand Canyon. The pictures really don't do it justice, it was amazing. There were a lot of tourist up there and our friend the goat. We were going to eat lunch there but this guy wanted OUR lunch. He actually was chasing Paul around the car because he had the Tupperware full of tuna squares. So we ended up eating our lunch in the car on the way to our next destination. We drove from there to Muscat which is on the western cost. Its a bigger city right on the water. We only stayed there a night, we walked through their souq which was pretty cool. Its like a market, except everyone is selling the same thing. Scarves, shoes, hats, Oman trinkets. We left Muscat and head toward the mountains in Oman. We drove along some crazy roads once we got into the mountains. Many gravel roads that were very steep. We were on this new section or road they made on the side of some mountains and it was kinda nerve raking. Ben did an amazing job of driving. We were looking for this camp site and getting nervous because it was getting later in the day and we were loosing day light. But after climbing up and down the mountains we finally found a great spot, with just enough time to start setting up camp. We didn't have a lot of time in this spot but we really want to go back. We were right next to the start of Snake Canyon which we could have hiked/swam. The book we had said it was a couple hour hike that required swimming in some sections. We explored it as far as we could go then turned around. We came apon one section where we would of had to jump in the water and we would not have been able to climb back out. I think we will visit this place again though.

School starts back up again on Monday and Ben will be swimming with his kids for the rest of the school year. I will also be helping Ben in the pool as his assistant, I am excited to have something to do all day everyday untill I leave. And I know Ben is so excited to be working with ME! :)

I hope you all have a great Easter!