whatsup

I'm back to school, too! (sorta)

I'm not actually ambitious enough to start on a degree right now or anything crazy like that, but I did return to the classroom yesterday as a sub.  I filled in for a 1st grade teacher and had 17 kids for the full day and I survived.  And I liked it!  I was nervous since it's something that I've never done, but aside from having a tough time deciphering the lesson plans, it went great.  I have a new "career".

This evening I'm teaching for real in our Bible Study group.  We're starting "Having a Mary Spirit - Allowing God to Change Us from the Inside Out" by Joanna Weaver.  I'm very excited to see what this study will do for all of us.  Our Tuesday PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) group is a wonderfully diverse group of women and I missed our time together over the summer.  But now we're getting back in the swing of things!

Bad Duerkheim by train

If you love wine, or good food, or rides, or games, or wine, or overeating, then the Bad Duerkheim Wine Wurst Markt is just the place for you!   They claim to be a big sausage festival, but in reality, it is the biggest wine fest in all of Germany.  It gets rockin' at night, but we went down for the day and headed out when it started getting crowded. 

Instead of driving, we hopped on a train in Wiesbaden and 3 switches later, we were in Bad Duerkheim.  Riding the trains here is so easy and convenient.  Our family was able to talk and play with the Grassi family the whole way down - much more fun than caravaning in two cars. 

We arrived at lunch time and dug right in.  Mike got Marisa a half chicken and she ate just about all of it.  How did a vegetarian such as myself end up with such a carnivore?  It's weird.  I had some delectable mushrooms in wine sauce.  Mmmm!  Mike had a wurst, of course, since it's a wurstmarkt.  We washed down the food with schoppens of wine.  These are half liter glasses.  Really.  After that, we were ready to watch kids ride some rides!  That's the kind of day people have when they go to a German fest.  Love it!

Marisa started Kindergarten!

Marisa is an official "big kid" now.  She started Kindergarten last week and may be finally getting into the routine of things.  She was super excited the first day, but then didn't want to go back for the rest of the week.  I couldn't really blame her.  The first day was a madhouse.  There's currently 28 kids in her class and even with the teacher plus and aide, it's just too darn many.  This week, we got word that the school has hired an additional kindergarten teacher who will start next week, so things will get a little better.  I'm just relieved that I won't have to pitch a really big fit to get the school to do what they should have done before school even started.  These numbers are insane and I don't see how DoDDS can continue to justify them.

So, stepping down from my soapbox, I'll tell you more about Marisa.  She is having some good times in class and some challenges.  She likes visiting the library (of course!) and learning Spanish.  Kindergartners have Spanish about twice a week as part of their specials rotation.  They also have host nation (German language and culture), art, music and PE.    Marisa says that the best part about Kindergarten is the drawing.  Her pictures are really getting good; her people have fingers and hair and feet.  Lots of details!

Jillian started 4th Grade!

Now I can get back to the business of telling everyone what we're up to over here in Wiesbaden. 

Last Monday, Jillian started 4th grade.  Her teacher is Mr. Skully, but he's team teaching, so she gets Ms. Brown and Ms. Younkin, too.  They all started with a bang and plenty of homework.  Jillian did a great job on all of it and didn't even complain... much.   In a couple weeks, she'll start back to TAG and will be truly settled in for the new school year.  On Tuesday, she'll also get back to Tae Kwon Do and find out how much she remembers from last year.  yikes!

The picture is from the first day of school.   She looked fabulous!

We're back online!

It has been a couple stressful weeks for me, and consequently, for Mike.  We had yet another computer crash.  After a few days of the computer being in the shop, we learned that the hard drive was corrupted.  This was the hard drive that we thought we had replaced in February, but it turns out that we had only replaced the hard drive pin, whatever that is.  So, anyway, we decided to hook up the kids' computer as our main one.  During that process, we ended up totally infesting it with viruses and had to restore the whole thing.  At least this time there wasn't any data lost, except for a couple of Jillian's saved Zoo Tycoon games.  After this fiasco, we decided to take the plunge and buy the laptop that we had planned to buy someday in the future.  It's been over 5 years since we had a new computer, so I suppose we may have been due.  We have a 17in Toshiba Satellite with tons of memory and features and we're both pleased with it. We also got an external hard drive for backing up future files.  Feel free to share any other tips for ensuring smooth computing for the next 5 years.  Got a favorite virus scan - tell us!  Ideas for remembering when to do backups? - tell us!   We don't want any new computer issues for a long, long while!