Surviving the second grade

That's right, Monday I survived the second grade. It was tough and I did a lot of reading, but I made it through the day. High five for me! And then today I survived 2 classes of 6th grade science and one of 8th grade science. Ah, the life of a sub at a small school overseas. This school has elementary, middle and high school all in one, so I am able to sub any and all grades.

So, back tracking a little, here is my snack from Sunday while working at my computer. I needed a little sugar booster and I love Swedish fish.

Boy was I glad Ryan got super hungry, so hungry that he made some pasta for late lunch/early dinner. The best part...leftovers for lunch on Monday.

Last night we watched a movie and these seemed like a nice treat. Still lovin' the TJ's snacks I brought back.
Yes, they were tasty.

Lots of cream filling.

This is how I was greeted this morning when I took the dog outside. Very close to the area where I send the dog to do her business. Luckily with the time change it is not as dark as it was before and I could see the cow before it startled me. They are certainly getting bigger in size. They are only 5 months old.

For lunch today I hoped to meet up with Ryan but he had a class and couldn't make it at the same time I was off, so I went by myself. I went with the buffet and was glad to get some salad in. Not the best salad bar ever, but trust me the TORC buffet boosts the best salad bar on base.

Yes, I scored some fat-free dresing today. Too bad the sodium is pretty darn high.

Go figure, it was taco Tuesday! Isn't it taco Tuesday everywhere today? So I made a little burrito, some spanish rice, corn and black bean salsa and guacamole.

Ok, ok, it was a buffet, and I love this cake. Who wouldn't want a checkerboard cake?

Now, I just wanted to share a little about one of my "hobbies"...DVD collecting and watching. Lets start with TV series. When we like a show we usually buy it on DVD and watch on episode every night before bed. We have watched most of these except for the most recent season.

Another favorite. Yep, we watched all 3 seasons.

Whoa, this is one of the greatest shows ever. Just finished watching the most recent season (5 I think). We don't get current episodes here so we are waiting for this year to end (hehe, we have some major waiting to do).

Our other favorite is 30 Rock and we are getting up to date on that too. Just in the middle of season 3.

Here is our latest and most expensive "hobby". Ryan and I were watching the Academy Awards 2 years ago and they did a montage of all the past winners for Best Picture. There were so many movies we had never even heard of, so we decided to start collecting. We got off to a slow start, but here is what we have so far.

Ryan bought me this for my UNLV graduation and it lists all the winndes in order. We are sticking to just best picture. This book is older, but I searched online to make sure my list (haha, it's a wish list on half.com so I know the order and what we have purchased) is up to date.

This past week we watched Cimarron and over the past 2 days we watched Grand Hotel. I wanted to tell everyone about how great these movies were so I thought I would also mention our collection and hobby of watching these greats. I loved both of these movies and those we have watched already. I think this movie watching should take us some time and keep us busy on the island.

Last but not least...I bought this recently and I am planning on making my first loaf this weekend. This came with so many recipes, but I think I am going to keep it simple. I'll keep you posted!

QUESTION: What are some of your hobbies?

Happy Halloween and catch up time

First off, Happy Halloween! I hope everyone had a safe and fun night yesterday. I will get to ours in just a moment, but first I wanted to play catch up since I am a little behind on sharing my photos.

Thanks everyone for the great ideas on uses for pencils. I will say some of those we came up with in our class, but there were some you shared that we did not think of. Hope you had fun with the brainstorming activity.

Thursday night I finally decided to make this pizza that has been in my freezer for a while. Gotta love Amy's!

What I really liked was that I was able to eat the other half for lunch the next day while I was at the high school. I really like cold pizza and this definitely tasted good cold.
Last week I also had the chance to stop by our landlord's market to pick up some bread for Ryan to use for garlic bread. They were doing an Italian lunch at work and Ryan was making the garlic bread. So I bought some rolls.
As well as a loaf of bread.
Then these caught my eye. These are premixed tuna salad with olive oil and veggies with the tuna. I thought they would be good inside a pita, and would make a nice lunch when I am at work. I'll let you know how they taste once I give them a try.
Oh yeah, I'm addicted...

Betcha thought I meant to coffee now...nope, just sudoku.

Ok, now we are caught up to Halloween day. We did a late lunch at A Porta (across from the base) just before it was time to get ourselves dressed up.

Yes, that is spreadable cheese food in a container similar to the butter packets. I will say this is actually very good.

This time we went with the margherita instead of a fried garlic pizza. I love that they dress the pizza with olives.

Then it was time to dress the dog. That's right, this year she is a bunny. No bee costume for her this time. As usual she is very unhappy with the idea of being dressed up. So this didn't last for very long.

I am not sure why, but the body part fits and the head is WAY to big. What kind of dog was supposed to fit in this part of the costume? It ended up being more like a hoodie zip sweatshirt.

But what a cute little bunny tail.

Awwwwww

No need for a costume here, she is already as scary as you can get for this holiday. I should point out she is actually hiding under a table. Scaredy cat!!!

And if you want to see something really scary, look what's crawling all over my back yard. Ewww, I hate the rain.

Here I am...not so scary!

But here is Ryan, who is VERY SCARY!!!

We went down to where he works on base for the squadron party. Look how creative people were with brining in desserts.

What a clever way to decorate rice pudding.

But, good news, they also served dinner (hot dogs and hamburgers) and had a nice looking veggie platter.

Then it was time for trick-or-treating for the kids. Those who have offices in this building decorated their offices (most with a theme) and set out candy for the kids. These kids went crazy since they could go back as many times as they wanted until all the candy was gone.

Here are some pictures from the various offices.

One was decorated like the office from Harry Potter.

Yes, floating candles, how cool.

And the trap door, which was the exit.

This is inside Ryan's office. They built a maze out of garbage bags to separate the path. Ryan would jump out in his scary costume. I helped point the kids in the right direction.

This was another office, set up like the Wizard of Oz.

Jackpot! This is where we located candy long after the kids stopped looking and went out for a hay ride.

The last of the offices.

Then we came home, watched a zombie movie and enjoyed this nice beer. If you have never had Chimay before I suggest you give a try at least once. This beer is blessed by Buddhist monks. They do serve it at places in the states, but at the Expo we found a vendor with it and so we bought a few bottles.

So that was it for our first Halloween overseas. They did a lot of great activities around base to give the kids an awesome Halloween. They also built a crazy haunted house in an empty building on the base. It was super scary. they recreated scenes from various horror movies. I think the scariest was the scene from the ring with the little girl in from of the TV with static that turns around and slowly crawls at you. Um, yeah, they totally did that and it was so scary. This was better than some professional ones I have been too. It was insane, and we had so much fun.

I also learned that the Portugese kids will go around tonight asking for candy, but that they do not get dressed up and do scary things.

QUESTIONS: First off, how was your Halloween? Second, do you like cold pizza?