Travel Travel and more TRAVEL!!!!!! (and school too!!!)

SO as promised last blog, (make sure you check out last blog about the Boot Scoot if you haven't yet), thought I would share with you the Griffin family travel plans for 2009.

February

I went to N'zwa Oman with my student...wooohoo, my calves still hurt.

April

Clifton will be gone ~14-15 days to Kansas City Missouri for training, then to San Antonio for training and then a few days to College Station. WHOOP!!!

May

I will travel to Turkey for one week to start our Geology 4 week Field Camp

June

They want me to go to Turkey for the last week of field camp, I am not sure about this though.

July

~3 to 4 days in Sweden with Courtney and Blake-then fly from Sweden to Houston.

About a week in College Station for Jacob, Maddie and Clifton at the old house while Jordan and I join my ghost hunting travel gals for a 3 day road trip to New Orleans in the middle of that.

Then, we are thinking of spending the next week and a half in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Why? You Ask. Because Clifton's father is close to closing a deal on a house in Hot Springs, which as it turns out Hot Springs is beautiful!!!! What Hot Springs has plenty of is cabins, lakes/springs and outdoor fun at a very very cheap price. Our hope is that all the McGraws, Griffins, Meltons and Millers (and any friends) will join us for some of that time in Hot Springs so we don't have to drag the kids and suitcases all over creation. We do the hard part by traveling 8000 miles to the states, we hope that everyone will be willing to join us in Hot Springs. I am currently looking for hot deals on cabins and get aways for everyone who would be willing to join us even if it is just for a weekend.

December/January

We are about to book trips for us, the Kents (Todd, Brenda, Elizabeth, Emily & Abby), The Lucas' (Gwen, Mike, Caden), The Bells (Mark and Lesley) & The Duffee's (Donna, Steven, Natalie & Hayley) to go to Singapore for a few days (this will either be a few days on Nokoi Island (2hrs from actual Singapore) or avoid Nokoi and just do Singapore and Santoso Island for Christmas. Then we all leave on December 26 from Singapore on a 4 day cruise to Kuala Lumpur to Phuket, Thailand and then back to Singapore where we will stay to celebrate the New Year with our Doha friends/neighbors.

Now for the second piece of good news...Jacob, Hayley and Natalie got there first letters of acceptance to school today. They are all currently at a nursery called Apple Tree, but now in DOha, all formal schooling starts at 4. It is incredibly challenging to get your child into school here. There are more four year old than there are spots for 4 year olds at school and they put the kids through interviews and screening processes not to mention the 15 page applications and full health work ups. Our first choice is The American School of Doha-but ASD is incredibly incredibly difficult to get into. We will not hear from ASD till May. Our second choice though has already come through. Compass International School which has an international curriculum which includes 3 days of french and 5 days of arabic each week. It has kids from all over the world and is a pretty cool place. Donna and I were pretty impressed with the staff when we visited and our friends have their 2 boys there.

Now for tuition....hold on to your hats....

drum roll please.....

for a 4 year old it is 16,438 dollars (US DOLLARS!!!!!!!!) that's right....60,000 Qatar Riyal for Jacob to attend next year. The absolutley lovely, wonderful and terrific folks at TAMUQ and Qatar Foundation pay for tuition. Everything except for the uniforms and food. Thank freaking GOD for that. There is no way we would be able to afford to school our children if they didn't. So we at least have a school for September and who knows by May we may even have a choice to make.