“Attention is the most concrete expression of love. What you pay attention to thrives. What you do not pay attention to withers and dies.”

Karen Maezen Miller

This is what Momma Zen said on her blog and I love it.  You have to pay attention to stuff, whether it is the cake baking in the oven, a child in a classroom, your laundry, your family and friends…all of these things and people need you to pay attention to them.

This is a funny time for me.  I am finished school for the summer and instead of going back in September, I will be meeting our baby.  I feel a little scared, a little excited and very curious as to how this is all going to be.  I have always thrown myself into my work and my classroom and it has kind of become who I am.  I am a little worried about what “I” will be without it for a while.    Growing up, I always visualised being a teacher, not a mother, but now, I will be learning to be a mother.  I am sure that this new journey will bring lots of things for me to learn and will add more dimentions to what “I” am made of,  but it feels so new and undiscovered that I have to admit, I am very nervous.

Nervous about how to be a mum, but also nervous about not being a teacher and losing that really important part of who I am.  But then I read the post by Momma Zen.

I make a big deal about giving all my students attention in the classroom.  The same attention, but different for each child.  This is what I think helps them grow from shy little seeds into big strong beanstalks.  My teaching assistant in London, (who taught me so much about being a teacher) calls this attention TLC.  Attention matters to me.  When the children feel secure and happy, it is only then that they can really engage in creating a classroom community and take part in learning.

But thinking about this, I needn’t feel lost because I guess now is the time to pay attention to my own little baby.  She needs attention so that she can grow and thrive.   So after giving all my attention to lots of children over the last six years, which I have loved and will absolutely return to,  I think I will take a little time to give attention to the sunflower in my own belly and see what I learn from that!

P.S. I have planted sunflower seeds on the balcony.  And they are still alive.  Yay!  Fingers crossed I can keep them growing until the flowers start to bloom

Yes, we are in the third trimester!  I can’t believe how fast time has passed.  That unbelievable moment of seeing two lines on the pee stick seems like a lifetime ago.  It has been a good ride so far.

First trimester was a whirl of insane hormones and extreme sleepiness. Not a good combination, especially in a new country and so far from all my friends and fam – so you could say I was really happy to be done with the first three months!

But the last three months have been lots of fun.  I felt great and the crazy hormones melted away when the happy hormones really kicked in!  The idea of the two of us becoming three started to sound more exciting and we even started buying baby clothes!  My bump looked cute (although my butt seemed to grow along with it!  The midwife says that big bums mean good breast milk, but  I think she is just trying to make me feel better!)  The baby started to kick and even more fun was when F felt her for the first time.  It made us happy  that some old school hip hop was playing on the TV and that was the first time we really felt her dancing for her life!  Thank goodness she will have some good music taste   And I loved it when F could feel the baby too.

And now we are in the home stretch.  Wow!  Feeling excited to soon meet this little person who has been using my body as her private condo for the last 6 months and who will continue to make herself comfortable in the next 3.  Being pregnant hasn’t been the drama that I thought it was going to be and even my expanding body has not freaked me out as much as I thought it would.  Doing yoga and keeping active has been amazing for me.

But that was before we hit third trimester and the blazing hot summer in Switzerland!!  Thank goodness for the lake and outdoor swimming pools! But we are going the Montreux Jazz Festival to see Q-tip, Raphael Saadiq, Mos Def and Lilly Allen, taking the train to Paris, good friends are coming to visit and I have 2 months off all to look forward to!

Still on the hunt for a cool diaper bag…I’ll let you know the adventures of finding a diaper bag another day.  I know you can’t wait for that

This is a message I got from one of the kids in my class last year.   It just made me laugh!   Remember its East London lingo.  Try not to look at the spelling or the fact that I was her teacher last year (I promise you, she does know how to spell in real life!).

Context:  She had heard a rumour that I was coming to visit school, but didn’t believe anyone until she had emailed me to see if it was true.  This message was received after my visit when they saw me 5 months pregnant for the first time.

u dd come to our school

i ddnt believe ppl

well its gd to see yooh

yooh hav gone bare fat

anywayz cya =]

Glossary (for those of you who don’t hang out with kids from the E1W:

Bare
	Means Loads of something. “I’m BARE Tired, or I’ve Got Bare Cash”

I just came back from the residential trip with my school.  It was beautiful and I really enjoyed the nature walk that we went on in the mountains.  Switzerland is stunning in the summer time.

Morgins, Switzerland

One of the little girls in my class, F is from Sweden.  She is a fair skinned, blond haired, blue eyed, soon to be knock-out beauty.

We chatted about life, family and of course, the baby, who by the way is making herself very well known by kicking her hands and feet everytime I sit down.  We can see the little ripples across my stomach if we watch carefully!  Anyway, F was asking about names and so I told her some of the ones we have in mind and she gave her honest opinion which is what you always get from kids.  That is why I like to work with them.  There is no beating about the bush like there is with adults sometimes.

So F turns to me and says, “Ms B, is your husband brown like you?

“Yes, he is.”

“Oh that is good.  So that means the baby is going to be all brown too.”

“Yes…”  wondering where she is going with all this….

F’s little face burst into a huge smile, “Oh, Ms B, I just love brown babies.  They are so cute, you know.  I am so happy that you will have a brown baby.”  And with that, she wandered off to join her friend a few steps ahead of us, leaving me to comtemplate cute brown babies.

P1010559, originally uploaded by shireenbee.

I could tell you about the scenery and the wonderful food, but you know that about Italy already and you can browse the pictures, but instead I will tell you this….

As we walked down the cobble stoned streets of Florence after dinner, we heard the distinct sound of a kazoo, spilling out the notes of Solo Mio…Looking up we saw a guy, probably a little tipsy, hanging out the window, playing his kazoo for all he was worth. Everyone on the street below whooped and applauded the random performance, as if it were something that happened every night in Florence! We all continued on to the place we had been going to before the kazoo had given us all an opportunity to share a smile.

I realised why I love Italy so much. It is because the people there are real. On the street you see people expressing themselves. For as many times that you see a woman telling off her man in loud, angry words, you see a couple locked in perfect PDA. The men are beautiful and well dressed and the women have real bodies and big hair that they show of with confidence.

And of course, F and I did manage to find a beach in the south that was totally deserted (just like the one in Portuagal!). If you are lucky, I’ll tell you where to find it!!

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”   Anais Nin

I just liked this quote and thought you would too.  Anais Nin just had a way of putting things that helps me remember that it is okay to still be finding my way.

In the UK, Year 6 children have to sit their SATs exams.  They are really important for the school because the government publishes the results in league tables that show how well the school is doing.  The tests are used in Secondary School to level the children.

So you can see that the tests end up being quite stressful for the children and the teachers.

That is the downside of teaching Year 6, but the upside is, when you go through such a stressful year with a group of kids and you manage to pull them through their exams, witness their first steps into adolescence and take them on their first residential trip, you end up building quite a special bond with your class.  And that is why I loved teaching Year 6.

But that is not what I wanted to write about.  This is what I wanted to say.

There was a little girl called N in my class.  She was just the most unique child and would never be anyone but herself.   She was cool, fun and dressed really well, but the best part was that she never took herself too seriously and was confident to laugh at herself whenever anything went wrong. But she never was really great at studying for the SATs.  She just felt that the test were not worth that much attention.  She had a point, but for the sake of the school and her report card, we plugged on with the studying.

Al last, when all the test were over and we had said our final goodbyes to the children on the last day of the summer term, I sat in my classroom feeling a little sad, a little relieved, a little excited for the holidays, and  a little lonesome for my class who were going on to bigger and more exciting adventures in Secondary School.

On my desk, I found a note:

“Dear Shireen,

I love me!  I love you too,

Love from N”

You see, it is that easy to believe you are fabulous without waiting for anyone to tell you so.

Today was the most gorgeous day.  It was warm enough to wear a spring jacket and do away with the boots that I have been wearing all winter.  Good thing too – last Thursday the left sole of my my Aldo boots broke again!  Third time this winter.  Aldo used to be my favourite shoe shop, but bee will have to think again before buying shoes there next time!

Anyway, I wore my little slip-on shoes and my spring jacket with my ipod playing Laura Izabor and as always a little bit of Maxwell thrown in there for good measure, a good book in my bag and some orange juice (can’t get enough of that stuff these days) as I strolled down to the beach in our little Swiss town.  I could see the French Alps so clear across the lake and the water was doing that beautful sparkley thing from the reflection of the sun and for once there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  I found myself a little spot by the water, pulled out my book and read the afternoon away.

It was one of those days where you can’t help but say thank you for all the things that are going so right in your life, when you think there is no such thing as a coincidence, that something in the universe muct be pulling you in the direction you happen to be walking.

Today I felt like saying thank you to all the people I passed on my walk.  Of course, I didn’t, just in case they thought I was a little nuts, which of course I am, but I like to keep that on the DL, thank you very much.

That is what happens when you get too much Vitamin D all in one go.

I have no excuse for not writing.  I am terrible, I know.  This one is for “Tim”, who demanded I stop slacking off!

Last Sunday we went to Buddhist Meditation.

A new teacher started at the school in January (let’s call her H) and she is just lovely and quirky and teaches yoga and was just what I needed to find in this place.  She was the one who told me about this meditation and I begged her to take us the next time she went.

There is a little Thai restaurant in a nearby village and the owner invites a monk to do meditation once a month.  They sit on chairs, but H asked if she, F and I cound sit on the floor.  It was pretty funny with all these tall restaurant chairs in front and the three of us perched in the very back.  But it was a perfect little space for us.

The monk was a superstar (if I can say that about a monk).  He talked about how meditation can become part of your way of life and part of the way you begin to think.  I love the idea that maybe in this life time, maybe the next, I might be able to keep a calm, stable mind.  If you know me, you know that calm and stable really are not terms that anyone would use to describe me!  But the good news is, I can learn to be that way, even if I am over excitable right now.  And that the journey to that point and beyond is something that I might even enjoy.

Its not that I have not meditated before.  I have, it is just that this time, I felt like a little smile was inside my tummy the whole time.  The monk had asked us to imagine a light shining like a sun from our bellies as our visualisation.  I loved that one! There I was, spreading belly sunshine loving kindness all around the world.

On the way home, F said that no matter how hard he tried to imagine a sun, all he kept getting was a sunflower.  Isn’t that the most beautiful image, though?  A sunflower in your belly.

I am in.  Sign me up for the next session.

Oh, and by the way….in addition to the sunflower, I also have a baby in my belly.  Yep, bee is with baby.  Baby bee to arrive in early fall.

We were chilling out in class. Children were colouring the title pages of their autobiographies and chatting quietly to each other. Suddenly I heard a peal of laughter from across the room. One of the girls called out,
“Ms. B, S just said the funniest thing. And it’s true!!”
“So what did you say?” I asked S, who was sitting there looking bewildered at the raucous his comment had instigated.
“I just asked why Israel was bombing the Gaza strip, if they want to keep it.”
“Ms. B, don’t you think S should be in charge of the world from now on?” T chimed in.
Well, yes T, I do think so.