14.8.2011 First week of work

Sorry about the lack of posts this last week. Work has started and our internet is only sort of working. It goes off and on and seems to be especially off in the evenings. For example, we were able to get on this afternoon so we were able to Skype with Nana (Cinda) before dinner and Grandpa Steve and Grandma Sue after dinner. But by the end of the conversation with Grandpa Steve and Grandma Sue our internet was struggling. And now as I’m writing this, I’m doing it in Word because I can’t get on the internet.

Getting ready for church.

This last week has been crazy. For work, Monday – Wednesday was new teacher stuff. Thursday and Friday all the teachers were back. It was difficult at first because for us new teachers we had a good amount of time to work on our curriculum, but I didn’t really know what the curriculum was. I was able to talk to Jason Smith, the other upper level math teacher the previous week so he was able to give me some things to work on. But it wasn’t until Thursday and Friday that I really got a good picture of what I need to cover. I’ll be teaching 3 different curriculums. There is the Cambridge 1 for grades 6 – 8, Cambridge IGCSE for 9-10, and the IB (International Baccalaureate) for grades 11-12.

Playing together.

Both of them want to do what the other is doing.

The school has a really neat dynamic to it. It’s smaller, 280 students K-12 and 70% of the students are native Germans. The reason that there isn’t a larger international make up is because there aren’t many international companies in or around Weimar. However, the school is growing and we’re in the middle of a remodel/construction project. We are in a new building, and the old building is being gutted to be remodeled. The old building will be the lower school, and the one we’re in now will be the upper school. Right now the upper school is in one wing and the lower in another. I wish I had a picture to illustrate all this.

Waiting for the bus.

Some of the things that are different is that the teachers move from class to class and the students stay put. This makes getting my classroom ready really easy. I share an office space with 5 or 6 other teachers. I do have a homeroom, which is kind of like an AVID class for those who are familiar with it. We meet once a week for 45 minutes and do attendance with them each morning. With them we’ll also do an overnight field trip during the year. The teacher I’m paired with was with this class last year, and I’ll stay with them next year too.

Caught in the rain after looking at an apartment. Oops, no coat!

And where is Heather during this time? She’s with the kids. They have done a great job with the limited space we have. Heather tries to make it out once or twice a day. If she stays in our little place to long, she gets claustrophobic. The hard part, however, is that it has rained a lot here. I’m not sure if we’ve had two days in a row without rain. Not more than that for sure. Today for example, it was raining when my alarm went off at 5:30 to go for a run (I didn’t make it out), when we woke up for church at 7:30 it was beautiful. After church we got Doner Kebab for lunch and went home for naps. Both Stanley and Holly slept today which is unheard of, Praise the LORD! (We listened to a Ron Frost sermon and then took naps ourselves.) After naps I was planning on taking the kids for a run but by then the clouds had rolled in and it was really dark

and ominous. It soon began to rain, no, pour. A little later it stopped and I took the kids to the

train station to get more milk. (The train station market is one of the only stores open on Sunday.) After we got back, it began to rain again. So in the course of today, it rained 3 times, and was absolutely beautiful too. My theory is that it is because there are no mountain ranges to stop weather patterns that travel east or west, so they come and go quickly. Anyways, that was a long way to say that sometimes it is hard for Heather to get out unless she goes out in the rain (which we do a lot).

One of our new favorite parks. We call it the elephant park. :-)

As far as the apartment hunt goes we looked at 5 apartments last week, bringing the total we’ve looked at to 7. We found one that we really like, and we put in an application for it. However, now we wait to see whether or not our application is chosen. One place we looked at, the realtor was showing to another 8 families at the same time! We showed up for a 5:50 appointment. We got there early and then another lady showed up and Heather whispered to me, “I think she’s here to see the apartment too.” I was thinking before or after our appointment. Then someone else showed up, then another and another. Eventually there were 5 of us and the realtor said, “There should be one more person, but they’re late so let’s go up.” (Actually she said it in German. Remember, very few people in Eastern Germany speak English.) I think another 3 or 4 families

showed up after that. It was crazy!

This is what I came home to after a run one morning.

We’re going to keep looking even though we put in an application. People at the church and school have been very helpful and we might have another 2 or 3 good possibilities. The main thing is that we want a place that Heather feels comfortable being at all day. We’ll see what God has for us.

Speaking of my colleagues at the school, we’ve been able to meet and get to know a lot of them and they are a great group. We had a staff BBQ on Friday, and BBQ is an art in Thuringia. The guys who where in charge of it had a very heated debate on Thursday on where to get the best meat. It was delicious! It was a family friendly event and there are others who have small children. On Saturday night we were invited over to Jason Smith’s house (remember he’s the other half of the math department) for dinner. He is from England and his wife is from Germany. They have two daughters, grades 9 and 11 (I’ll have both of them in class). They were very warm and welcoming, and the girls were great with Stanley and Holly. They played with them all evening and were not upset about it at all! We had a great time and Jason and Kirsten gave us lots of good information about living in Germany, shopping inexpensively, and more. We enjoyed tea with them, and another BBQ. He says he’s not good at the BBQ but it was really really good! (Heather says it’s the best she’s ever had.) I’m excited to work with him, and we now have two very great babysitters. They actually already babysit a lot for other staff members and have no problem adding us to their clientele.

Classes start on Thursday this week, so I have a lot to do before then. Hopefully our internet will be more consistent so I can get more posts out. Oh, one last big thing happened this week. The apartment complex now has a washing machine! We did laundry finally, and well… I’ll let you see what happened. Click here to see our latest youtube video. Bis Später!