Merry Christmas to all homeschoolingmiddleeast readers! It’s our first Christmas in Dubai as a family, but not my first Christmas in Dubai since I lived here years ago. It’s where I met my hubbie 🙂
At the Souk Madinat Jumeirah with the Burj Al Arab (The Arabian Tower) and a Christmas tree in the background along with a, typically Dubai, modern remake of old Dubai.
It doesn’t feel at all Christmassy here. Too humid! I miss the UK so much at this time of year! Christmas needs to be cold for me! And it’s hard to celebrate with a partner who doesn’t, and who doesn’t have any traditions to share. But he tries hard 🙂 I feel so guilty that I’m not making any wonderful traditions for the kids to pass on. But I just try and concentrate on making it a happy day, even if not very Christmassy or what I think Christmas should look like!
I’m typing this whilst listening to Christmas music on youtube. Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ sure takes me back to great ’80s Christmas parties! Aaah, those were the days!
We are slowly settling into our new home. Loving having something of a dedicated homeschooling/family/library room. All the books in one place not scattered around so that I could never find them when I wanted them! According to the Santa Tracker, he’s just passed over so the kids will be happy in the morning 🙂
Happy, happy 25th December everyone, whatever you’re doing, celebrating or not…
About homeschoolingpenny
Hi and welcome! My name is Penny and I used to live in Bahrain but In November 2012 moved to Dubai and now we live in Granada, Spain! If you want to contact me my email is pjmontford@hotmail.com. I recommend you start my blog on 'Day 1' but please enjoy whatever you dip into.
23 February 2012 marked the first day of no more school FOREVER for my two kids. Edward, who is nearly 10 had attended a variety of schools since he was very little. Petra, who is now 6, has never gone to school. On this date we decided Edward was never going back to school and Petra never would go to school. We hope to successfully homeschool from this day forward, although we would consider an alternative school as an option- if there was some amazing Sudbury or other really alternative school.
Actually, I prefer the term 'home learning' than 'homeschool' because I don't like to think of school coming into our home. In fact, I hope to go further and guide/learn alongside, rather than teach, my kids using the 'unschooling' philosophy to instill a lifelong love of learning in them. We lived in the Middle East and now Spain all of which are very challenging places to home educate.
This is an exciting journey that I used to blog about regularly, at first it was on an almost daily basis. Please join me on our travels and I hope we might be able to help each other out along the way. I certainly hope I can be a source of support and comfort and, in time, knowledge to all potential/presently participating homeschoolers/home educators/unschoolers. Good luck to us all! If you want to read about why I started home educating, why I pulled my son out of a 'very good' private school mid-term, how I felt at the very start and how my philosophy has evolved, please start from 'Day 1' of the blog.
Please do post comments at the end of any days that you read. Your opinion is valuable and it's great to start up debate amongst other people commenting too, however old the post. Thank you for visiting homeschoolingmiddleeast.
Homeschooling Middle East 
Happy Christmas to you. Sometimes traditions don’t have to be quite like what we remember from our own childhoods. For instance Thanksgiving for us. The typical American thanksgiving involves eating turkey, stuffing and tons of pie and the ladies cleaning up while the men watch football. It is for many people getting together with large expanded family. This is not possible for me since I am not near enough to family. The last couple of years we have gone to our local clubhouse and had thanksgiving dinner with about 100 neighbors. This is nice but as we plan to return to England we will be back to Thanksgiving being our own personal holiday. Our new tradition has been decided to be our family going out for a nice meal on that particular day. I realized that I do not need turkey and stuffing to be thanksgiving and I hate cleaning up and American football so these things don’t have to be missed. I still get the important part of the tradition of family together and being thankful.
It is hard to be in a hot climate when our emotions feel like it should be cold and snowy. It just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps if it is possible in the future you might spend Christmas on a holiday to a cooler climate whether that be the UK or Russia or some other cold place. No harm in a vacation becoming a tradition. One perk of being in someplace like Dubai for Christmas I would think might be that most restaurants would be open so maybe going out for a special meal after opening gifts and then going out for a movie could be fun. I am just saying that Christmas traditions can be anything in the world if you think outside the box a bit and not get stuck on the cliche stuff.
I know, I sound silly don’t I, Dottie! I have really tried to evaluate what traditions I would like to have and what doesn’t work. I know lots of Americans (and probably Canadians too for their Thanksgiving) have had to evaluate how to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, esp. when they live overseas or far from family, so at least I’m only agonising about one of them! I’ve wanted to go away every Christmas for a few years but it just doesn’t work out. I’ve wanted to show the kids a European Christmas market for years too, which would be somewhere like Austria or Germany. My problem isn’t thinking outside the box it’s accepting that things aren’t as I’d like them to be and to focus on the good things i.e. gratitude and our immediate small family (inc. the non-Christmas celebrator!) Thank you for your kindly message. It is so much appreciated. I endeavour to work harder today on the important things! A very merry Christmas to you and a wonderful 2013 and a very good luck with your move! Let me know how it goes!