Another week

Well another week has passed and it kicked my butt! The ratio in our room is one adult:10 kiddos. It is crazy! At one point last week we had 29 kids. Oh my goodness it was crazy. I am racking my brain to come up with better solutions to manage these kiddos. I am trying to do as much movement as possible, while still allowing for ample learning opportunities. It is tough. On top of that, I am not too crazy about some of the management. I know this is still new, so it will get better. It will get better, right? I don't know. All that I know is that life here is getting pretty routine. I need to start planning more things for the weekends now. This weekend and the last one I have not felt too good. Last weekend I had no voice. This weekend I am coughing up all kinds of lovelies. I just can't get a break. Friday I saw Iron Man 2...equally as good as the first. Saturday we celebrated Paul and Lenea's anniversary. 17 years. Wow!

We are studying the alphabet right now. We are on an alphabet adventure. One letter each week, and this coming week is the letter Q. You know what starts with the letter Q? Not a whole lot. Bummer. It is okay. We are going to do some Q-tip painting this week though. That should be interesting. 29 kids and paint. I am not entirely positive how it will turn out, but it should be alright. Everything is washable. This coming weekend we are going to be celebrating Elizabeth's 15 death day. She refuses to have a sweet 16 birthday, so we are calling it the death of 15. Eccentric, yes. Anywho, it should be fun. We are going to celebrate it on the patio behind our favorite Greek restaurant with a few families and some of Elizabeth's friends. It should be fun!

Time Flies

It is amazing how much faster the days pass by now that I am working. Grrr. I don't like it. I need to be more intentional with my time here. I want to do more traveling on the weekend and explore more of this great land! Unfortunately this past weekend I was sick. I spent all day yesterday inside reading Harry Potter. I never thought I would say this, but I am addicted to the series. I am on the seventh and final book and it is consuming me. It was good to have someting to get wrapped up in, so that I could rest up and allow my body some down time. I started this week with a cough and a little congestion. I assumed it was allergies, since everyone around here is doing the same thing. Slowly my cough progressed so that Thursday I was starting to lose my voice. I sounded like an adolescent boy going through puberty. It was lovely. Friday my voice was kaput. It did not work. Saturday I spent all day indoors reading until Saturday night Paul and I ventured to the movies. We saw the remake of Nightmare on Elm St. It was so-so. At first we thought we were in the wrong movie theater because there were two couples with small children ranging in ages from infant to six years old. Parents of the year. Those poor kids looked traumatized at the end of the movie. Essentially the parents were only making it harder on themselves. The entire premise of the movie is not to fall asleep or you will die. It is just weird because for some reason I assumed that soldiers would make very disciplined and involved parents. This is proving to not be the case for a large majority of the parent population. There is a small percentage of parents who are really great and involved parents, but the majority are just terrible. Case and point the parents who brought their kiddos to a rated R horror flick. Way to go.

Today I am feeling much better. My voice is almost totally back, so I am planning on reconnecting with the world via skype. I am finding it a lot harder to keep in touch than I thought it would be. It is killing me! I have missed numerous skype dates and I miss you guys. I guess you could say I am a little homesick at the moment. Just missing some of the conveniences I was used to...being able to get in the car and go wherever I wanted, hanging out with friends and family, shopping at my favorite places, etc. I know...I am throwing myself a bit of a pitty party. I will get over it. I just love you guys and I hate missing out on things like friends' graduations, birthdays, and anything really. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a fantastic opportunity here. I am finding out more about myself while trying to become an independent person. All right. That was deep enough for one post :) Love you guys!!

My first full week in my classroom!

Ahhh....must love the weekend! I woke refreshed this morning, which is a feeling I haven't felt all week. It just seemed like I was never going to catch up on my sleep. I slept for almost 12 hours and it was glorious! It is almost noon here and I am still in my PJ's. Good times. The weather here has been crap. Those two weeks of sunshine and bliss were a mean trick. We were expecting the weather to stay that way, but aparently that is not the case. It is just gloomy. We have a few hours of sunshine here and there, but mostly overcast and drizzly. Gross. It makes you want to find a good book and curl up in bed. I must venture out today to return a dress in the Mannheim shopping district. I am thinking about bringing a book and finding a cafe to park myself for the afternoon. This will allow me to feel a little better about doing absolutely nothing on my Saturday. :)

The week in review:

Sunday we went to Ramstein, which is an air force base that is about 10 times better than ours. These are some pictures taken along the way. My intention was to take pictures of Ramstein to show as proof of the awesomeness, but my camera died after the third picture I took along the way. Whomp. Whomp.

The first thing we did once we arrived in Ramstein was eat at Macaroni Grill. Of course it was delicious. The best part was that everyone spoke English. Don't get me wrong, I love learning German. It is just nice to be able to speak in my native tongue and not feel ridiculous for trying to pretend that I know what I am doing. I didn't find anything while we were there, which is probably a good thing because I won't recieve my first pay check for a month.

I decided it would be best to give you the highlights of the week instead of a daily breakdown. Let's see.... Monday was spring cleanup. All of the flowerbeds were spruced up with fresh flowers. The ghetto trash sitting along some of the buildings such as old bikes no one rides, were hauled to the curb for trash pickup. The new found beauty of spring clean up lasted about 5 days before the ghettoness returned. It didn't take long fo the hoodlums to kick up the newly planted flowers or leave their trash scattered along the streets. Ridiculous. I have decided that I am going to like my co-workers (as in the people on my team that work with me in the preschool room...I am not so sure about some of the members of management). They seem like genuine people, so I think we will get along. It is kind of hard/weird for me to be in the lead position. I had wanted to ease into it, since I am still learning the routines, but this was not the case. I have already done two weeks of lesson plans, updated bulletin boards, set up conferences with parents, etc. It is all me, but my team is really great. They do anything I ask, and are eager to help. I am pretty excited. The only thing I am not excited about is the crazy amount of kiddos in my room. Ahhh! I would say that about half of them have some pretty intense behavior issues due to terrible parenting. It makes me want to say a few choice words to some parents who are refusing to parent these kids. I think the craziest thing is that for some reason I thought that soldiers would be very diligent parents who would reinforce more structure into these kids lives. This is not the case. They pretty much let their kids do whatever they want. I would sort the parents into two groups....really good parents and parents who should not have kids. There really is no middle ground on this matter. With all of this being said, it makes for a really tiring day when I am chasing kiddos around for eight hours. I come home and zone out. Eventually my body will adjust and this will feel normal. I can't wait for that!

Everybody's working for the weekend.

Ahhhh....the weekend. I was pretty excited once I saw Friday. I was pooped. Wednesday I did not have to watch videos, just more paperwork. I am pretty sure that they know everything about me, which is a little intimidating at times. In the afternoon I did more observations in other classrooms and not my own. Interesting, but kind of odd. I would have like the opportunity to be in my room more, so that I would be able to see the setup of the day. This would have helped in making the lesson plans for the upcoming week, but aparently that is not how they do things. After work I came home and cooked dinner from a box. We had one of those Macaroni Grill things...it comes with noodles, spices, grated cheese, and sundried tomatoes. All you have to do is add the chicken, water, and butter. Very simple, but so yummy! Then I headed to bed around 9 PM for my early morning the next day.

My alarm rang at 4 AM for my 5:30 AM shift. I am one of those people who must set my alarm to allow snooze time. I just can't get up immediately unless I realize I have overslept. In that case the rest of my day is ruined. I find myself running to get ready and the rest of my day is off. I need time to wake up and put on my happy pants. I didn't sleep too well that night; I was too fearful of oversleeping and being late for my first early shift. I found out that if you are a minute late, then they dock you 15 minutes on the time clock. I am not entirely sure how legal that is, so we are looking into it. Anywho, I was not late. In fact, I was early. Shock! Actually I have been on time and/or early every day! Sorry, I have to give myself props for this because I am not the most punctual person. I found that I really enjoyed the early shift. The morning was so productive. We (Shauna, my coworker, and I) were able to get so much done... we organized some shelves, laminated fun decorations for Cinco de Mayo, and other odd jobs around the room. The kids slowly started trickling in around 6ish and then another wave of kids came around 7:30. I spent the entire day in my classroom. It was glorious! We also had a team meeting to get everyone on the same page. We are behind on observation portfolios, which are really great in theory. Every child has a portfolio that the teachers add to every week. It can be simple things like Johnny learned to tie his shoe, or Susie was able to say her ABC's. Really great, right? I agree, until you realize that I have 28 kiddos and the portfolios have not been updated since August of 2009. I love jumping into something and already feeling like I am drowning in it. So refreshing. Not. Sorry, I am a wee bit bitter about this. I did find out that all of the people on my team can help on the portfolios, so we have divided the kids up amongst us. We each have 7 kids to make observations for. It is a good thing. I also found out that I am loosing one of my team members to the toddler classroom. Major whomp. I have a very attention needy group, so the more hands the better. After work I got an official ID. I can now purchase things on base without any help. I am a big girl. I can now by a soda from the commissary. Small victories my friends. Small victories. This is a big joke with us because I was told that I did not have permission to purchase anything on base with my installation pass. I could enter the commissary, PX, or anything else, but not purchase. Where is the logic in this? Now I am a big kid. I can buy things all by myself.

Friday I had my normal shift hours from 9-6. I spent the first half of the day watching videos circa 1975. Always fun to see how far we have progressed in fashion. Other than that, I didn't really learn anything I didn't already know. I couldn't imagine that a random person on the street wouldn't know either. Yeesh. It was training for the sake of training; just so they can say they did it. I went to my little training room, sat down to my 8 videos, and thought about the numerous things I would have liked to be doing. After lunch I came back to my room to enjoy the rest of the afternoon with my kiddos. We had cake for a birthday celebration and played outside. It is amazing what sugar does to a little person. It is like we injected them with crazy juice. After our outdoor time we came inside and closed down the room. I really like my team members. They seem really supportive and like good people. We went to eat italian food for dinner, but this italian place is located in the back of a park. It is pretty incredible!

This is a tree in their beer garden. It catches my eye every time.

The beer garden outside. On a sunny day you would not be able to find a seat out here.

The inside. I know it is dark, but it was the best picture I could get. The pictures on the walls are a mixture of famous people and random Italian families.

Today I slept in. It was glorious. We were going to go to the MaiMarkt, but it was rainy and yucky outside so we opted for lunch and a movie. Of course we ate Greek to satisfy our weekly indulgence, and then we went to see Percy and the Olympians. It was pretty cute. I have spent a large majority of the day reading. There is nothing like curling up with a good book on a rainy day. It is oddly satisfying. Tomorrow we are going to Ramstein. I can't wait to see what fun we find :)