Ending One Chapter

It has been an emotionally draining week.  I closed the school year saying goodbye to great friends and wonderful families, preparing the library for summer, and beginning preparations for our move to Turkey.  I did get a great send-off from my school family...a wonderful book of cards and well wishes from students and another from the school staff.  I will miss them all and will think of them often as I begin my travels abroad.  I hope that they will follow me on this adventure and participate in some projects that I hope I can use to bridge two different schools half a world away!

Inside the Library

I really wish I was 'Outside the Library' because 'inside the library' is a disaster right now.  There are so many things going on that I am going nuts!  My library is always an active place but right now it is just crazy.  Each of my 5 grade levels are in the process of finishing up their unit study of fairy tales so there are props strewn around.  I have 3 different reading celebrations happening in the next 5 days so there party supplies and permission slips stacked everywhere.  I am trying to get the library in good shape to end this school year and begin the next (without me, of course) so there are piles of books everywhere waiting: to be processed, to be weeded, to be fixed, to be shelved.  And...I haven't even started thinking about the inventory that I will be starting next week.  YIKES!  I am sooooo looking forward to my upcoming adventure.

The Journey has 'Officially' Begun....The Paperwork Phase, Anyway!

I have taken the first step...I have mailed my retirement packet back to The Texas Teacher Retirement System to begin the retirement process.  Next step, I will make my application for a Turkish Work Visa next week.  We have already found an agent to lease our home, we will sign the papers and put it on the market in the next few weeks.  We have our travel documents in order (or will have as soon as we get our visas).  Now all we have to do is all of the packing, yuck.  This is the part that I REALLY dread, but I have a plan...I just need to implement it, and DO IT!  So that is what I will do....starting today.

Going to Istanbul!

Well, I've done it!  After 28 years of service teaching students from Alvin to El Paso, Laredo to Pearland with a year in HISD, to boot, I have decided to retire!  However, I did not say QUIT!  I am retiring from the Texas Public School System and going to try something new.  I have accepted a job in an international school at The Uskudar American Academy in Istanbul, which is a private Turkish school.  It is a bilingual school so all of the classes are taught in both English and Turkish--including in the library!  I will be teaching library classes to students in PreK through 8th grade with 3 other librarians and will be working closely with the High School Librarians. 

This will truly be an experience: exciting, thrilling and just a little bit scary!  We will be leasing our house, (selling some pieces of furniture, storing the rest in those packing PODs, kicking our youngest son out of the house (don't feel too bad for him, he is 27 years old--and he will be taking one of our cats with him!), grabbing up our suitcases full of clothes, a few boxes of teaching supplies as well as the cat that nobody wanted (he is very sweet--to us!) and catching a plane to Turkey!  WOW!

My husband, Steve is excited, too.  He will be able to attend University (on-line or at the English speaking campus in Istanbul), he will also be in charge of shopping at the grocery store and street markets, volunteering at the school and doing our travel planning! He is a little worried that he won't have much to do.... HA!  He just doesn't realize how busy he will be, does he.

Now it is time for The Traveling Librarian to get busy and begin to do all the things it will take for us to be ready to leave in mid-August.