This post is for those of you who keep insisting that Tony and I are SO brave to live overseas and SO adventurous to immerse ourselves in a different culture.

It’s true, every day really IS an adventure, full of small but interesting experiences. Our morning taxi ride to school, for example, is a bumpy, swervy, death-defying experience full of cow-dodging, speed-bump-soaring, pothole-pounding, horn-honking lunacy that we hardly even notice anymore. And it’s true that we have interesting cultural opportunities on the weekends and over school breaks. However, our days are generally filled with mundane tasks and routines, not unlike those of teachers in the States.

Here’s a typical “day in the life” of Sharon and Tony …
6:32 a.m. – Kapoor pulls up in his taxi to drive us to school.

6:46 a.m. – We greet the American Embassy School gate guards and walk to our respective buildings.

8:30 a.m. to 3:35 p.m. – Tony sometimes gets breakfast (and frequently gets snacks) at Open Hand Café, which is just inside the gate on campus. He teaches grades 9 and 12 on alternate days, attends meetings, works in the English Office and meets with students during his breaks and lunch.

I work with third-grade English learners in three different grade-level classrooms every day, teach World Language English to eight third-graders every other day, attend lots of meetings, and try to eat lunch outside whenever possible.

One thing I DON’T have for the first time in my teaching career is playground supervision responsibilities! It IS a nice playground, though.

After school – Tony often has more meetings and/or piles of papers to grade after school, but he occasionally drags himself to the fitness room for a jog on the treadmill. I go to Hot Yoga on Mondays, play rehearsals for “Beauty and the Beast” on Wednesdays, and technology workshops followed by Zumba on Thursdays. Because the work day includes little down time and because many after-school activities take place on campus or at the American Embassy across the street, I often stay late at school to catch up on emails and plan lessons.

If there’s nothing going on after school, we catch a taxi outside the school gate for the 20-minute ride home. The longer we stay at school, the worse the traffic gets.

Evenings – Thanks god our housekeeper, Raji, makes dinner most nights because it’s not unusual for us to stumble through the door after 8 p.m. Our evening excitement typically includes watching TV till about 9 and then heading to bed.

So that’s it. Jealous? Ha!