Wednesday, December 3

First day of school for Aeden and me at the International Preschool and Kindergarten! I'm working as an assistant teacher in the kindergarten class in the mornings, with Ms. Jo, an English woman (her husband is in the English Army and works here in their embassy). It is exciting to get to work with other kids and be involved in a fun school like this one, and to have Aeden get to have a good place to be around other children and a different setting for a while each day. It is funny though, too, because I am hearing all the goings-on of the school in my head each night...but with an English accent since I'm listening to Ms. Jo! Here's the url if you're interested in seeing a bit of the school: http://www.preschooltr.com

If you click all the way through to an archive newsletter, you'll see the logo of the school, also shown here on the front of the building with Aeden. The first time I saw the logo I smiled inside...I'm sure there are plenty of "children around the globe" logos out there in the world, but it is this very motif that I used for the EcoTeam logo when we were setting up the program at the Environmental Leadership Center at Warren Wilson in 1997. I remember sitting in front of the computer and cutting and pasting the children, rotating them to go around the globe graphic I had found. They've stopped using the logo and moved to something much more "mature" with children's handprint graphics, but even when I visited 4 years ago they were still using the achievement certificates I had made for the third graders. Anyway, it was a warm fuzzy moment, how else to describe it?!

Aeden cried. A lot. But the other teachers helped the traffic flows as kids moved from place to place and helped to steer me out of his line of sight whenever possible. He'll grow to love going to school here, I'm sure. Besides, how can you not love watching a Christmas Barney episode projected on the wall in the afternoon?