Monday, November 10 "Recovery from yesterday's walking...and a new addition to the herb farm upstairs"

We bought two basil plants a while ago when we saw them at Migros, as we didn't know if we'd see basil again. It is not a common herb here and I didn't even find dried basil (feslegen) in grocery stores until about 2 weeks ago. It was one of those things that I checked for at every store I went into. So anyway, we discovered that Maren's window sill has very good sunshine so they found there home there. Then of course Lacey wanted some plants too. Today we've added to our herb family a parsley plant and a mint. The mint is a bit straggly so we'll see how it does, but Lacey's happy for now to have a little green in her room (no joke, I saw at a store at the mall yesterday little boxes of grass to grow in your apartment. It was in a funky little store, so it was a bit off-the-wall anyway, but I can definitely see how happy we will be to have our own yard when we return to Olympia.

I turned down a full-time teaching job today and I'm still wondering if I made the right decision. After weighing the time traveling to and from work, the childcare expense for Aeden all day and the girls before and after school, and how much (or little) energy I would have left after each day, I decided not to take it. I interviewed at the school on Friday and they handed me a schedule on the spot, the only thing left to be decided was the pay and the start date (after I had told them that, no, Monday would not work to start). I was to teach English speaking at a private primary school, and my classes included first through seventh graders. I didn't even meet any of the students, but I had lunch in the cafeteria with the principal and the wife of the husband-wife owner team, and walked a bit of the halls and such with my contact who knew of the opening and drove me to the meeting. I feel like I'm missing an opportunity to make a difference, but worry that my efforts to make a difference for those kids would come at the cost of my own kids and Brian. I'm hopeful that a part-time position at the international preschool I visited might still work out eventually (or something like it) and Aeden can come with me and we can both benefit from the arrangement. We'll see.