Monday, October 6 "First Day of School"
Time for school! We all got dressed, ate breakfast (odd little beef sausage patties (some kind of Kofte) and eggs, with bread and raspberry jam), and got ready to go. We sent Brian off to his bus stop looking handsome in a tie and sportcoat (a shirt and pants, too) and his briefcase. I loaded up all the supplies into the stroller, got Aeden loaded up too, and handed the girls their own bags to carry with the paper towels and tissue boxes to carry. We set off on our walk up the hill. The stroller was a bit too heavy to be easy to maneuver on the cracked sidewalks and enormous curbs, so it was quite a challenge pushing it. But we made it, and it was cool outside since it was still morning.
When we arrived at the school there were already many children playing on the basketball court (the meeting area for the K-5 kids in the morning). I found a teacher and introduced the girls and a little blond and blue-eyed girl exclaimed, "You're Lacey? You're in my class!" and then the chattering took off from there. She's Annie from Kentucky, with a little sister, Emma, in kindergarten. She started running off to bring other girls back to meet Lacey, and then some boys too. It was pretty cute. I stayed with the girls until it was time to line up, snapped some pictures, and headed off back down the hill to our apartment, exhausted.
Maren's officially in kindergarten! Her class is called "K5" and her teacher is Miss Newcomer. We laughed. Lacey's teacher is Miss Sneed. I got home and played with Aeden for a while, and he took a nap, so I did too. I got a call that I would be picked up to go to the police station to file our paperwork for our Residency Permits ("they want to see the wife") and that they'd be here in about 20 minutes. So in a daze I grabbed a brochure from Oasis so we could be dropped off there after the trip, our passports, some snacks for Aeden, and we headed downstairs.
Brian showed up in a car with three other men in suits and I commented about how odd it was. He said, "Yeah, you'd think I was hanging out with my brother." I squeezed into the backseat with Aeden on my lap and we drove to the police station. A man from TED accompanied us, but he did not speak much English at all. So we grunted our way through and Brian got his paperwork squared away, but they wanted 4 pictures of each of us and to see birth certificates for the rest of us, and a marriage certificate for me. I hadn't brought my binder of all that stuff, so we'd have to come back.
We had them drop us off at Oasis, and waited the 15 minutes for school to get out so we could ride the bus home with the girls and show them how it worked for the next day. Here's Aeden waiting with us and going for a "ride" on the Oasis Lion Mascot outside the front door of the school. We made it home on the bus!
Miss Newcomer and Maren after school
Ms. Sneed and Lacey after school
Aeden discovered that he could find his nose and if he squeezes it, I say "honk!". The first time he tried it, he was patting his way down his face from his forehead on down to his nose, almost like a sobriety test. It was pretty funny. So we practiced squeezing each other's noses a lot today.
"Honk!" "Honk!"
Funny, but Daddy's nose honks when you squeeze it at dinner time, too!
Lacey's class had made her welcome cards, so she showed them all to me. They were very sweet. We talked through their adventures at lunch (there's not a "No Trading" policy like at Pioneer Elementary!), wearing slippers in class, and it being E week in K5. All was good for them.
Brian seemed to hit it off well with his department head, Mustafa (MOOS-tuh-fuh). He got him all excited about the prospect of bringing another ASM teacher here to do a materials science training for the TED teachers. ASM is the group that Brian has been working with the last two summers, so that would be really neat to bring the program here also. One of ASM's more senior titles is "Chemical Ambassador"...which seems like a title that could be within reach after setting up an international relationship for training. They're off to a good start, so that's a relief.
Mustafa (and Asli, who is his assistant) is the chemistry department head and also the head of the IB program here. He seems to be in the camp of always looking for improvemenets and reaching for more...which is good since it seems he may be receptive to Brian's different ways of doing things instead of expecting Brian to just become one of the herd.
Time for school! We all got dressed, ate breakfast (odd little beef sausage patties (some kind of Kofte) and eggs, with bread and raspberry jam), and got ready to go. We sent Brian off to his bus stop looking handsome in a tie and sportcoat (a shirt and pants, too) and his briefcase. I loaded up all the supplies into the stroller, got Aeden loaded up too, and handed the girls their own bags to carry with the paper towels and tissue boxes to carry. We set off on our walk up the hill. The stroller was a bit too heavy to be easy to maneuver on the cracked sidewalks and enormous curbs, so it was quite a challenge pushing it. But we made it, and it was cool outside since it was still morning.
When we arrived at the school there were already many children playing on the basketball court (the meeting area for the K-5 kids in the morning). I found a teacher and introduced the girls and a little blond and blue-eyed girl exclaimed, "You're Lacey? You're in my class!" and then the chattering took off from there. She's Annie from Kentucky, with a little sister, Emma, in kindergarten. She started running off to bring other girls back to meet Lacey, and then some boys too. It was pretty cute. I stayed with the girls until it was time to line up, snapped some pictures, and headed off back down the hill to our apartment, exhausted.
Maren's officially in kindergarten! Her class is called "K5" and her teacher is Miss Newcomer. We laughed. Lacey's teacher is Miss Sneed. I got home and played with Aeden for a while, and he took a nap, so I did too. I got a call that I would be picked up to go to the police station to file our paperwork for our Residency Permits ("they want to see the wife") and that they'd be here in about 20 minutes. So in a daze I grabbed a brochure from Oasis so we could be dropped off there after the trip, our passports, some snacks for Aeden, and we headed downstairs.
Brian showed up in a car with three other men in suits and I commented about how odd it was. He said, "Yeah, you'd think I was hanging out with my brother." I squeezed into the backseat with Aeden on my lap and we drove to the police station. A man from TED accompanied us, but he did not speak much English at all. So we grunted our way through and Brian got his paperwork squared away, but they wanted 4 pictures of each of us and to see birth certificates for the rest of us, and a marriage certificate for me. I hadn't brought my binder of all that stuff, so we'd have to come back.
We had them drop us off at Oasis, and waited the 15 minutes for school to get out so we could ride the bus home with the girls and show them how it worked for the next day. Here's Aeden waiting with us and going for a "ride" on the Oasis Lion Mascot outside the front door of the school. We made it home on the bus!
Aeden discovered that he could find his nose and if he squeezes it, I say "honk!". The first time he tried it, he was patting his way down his face from his forehead on down to his nose, almost like a sobriety test. It was pretty funny. So we practiced squeezing each other's noses a lot today.
"Honk!" "Honk!"
Funny, but Daddy's nose honks when you squeeze it at dinner time, too!
Lacey's class had made her welcome cards, so she showed them all to me. They were very sweet. We talked through their adventures at lunch (there's not a "No Trading" policy like at Pioneer Elementary!), wearing slippers in class, and it being E week in K5. All was good for them.
Brian seemed to hit it off well with his department head, Mustafa (MOOS-tuh-fuh). He got him all excited about the prospect of bringing another ASM teacher here to do a materials science training for the TED teachers. ASM is the group that Brian has been working with the last two summers, so that would be really neat to bring the program here also. One of ASM's more senior titles is "Chemical Ambassador"...which seems like a title that could be within reach after setting up an international relationship for training. They're off to a good start, so that's a relief.
Mustafa (and Asli, who is his assistant) is the chemistry department head and also the head of the IB program here. He seems to be in the camp of always looking for improvemenets and reaching for more...which is good since it seems he may be receptive to Brian's different ways of doing things instead of expecting Brian to just become one of the herd.
No comments:
Post a Comment