Scouting Mission

Wednesday was a school holiday for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. As we are not Catholic, many of us decided to forgo the feast and travel instead. One group wanted to go to an authentic Austrian Christmas market, and as none of us have strong Austrian geography skills, managed to pick pretty much the furthest away, in Salzburg. Tuesday morning, they mentioned that there was one more spot in the car; would I like to come?

During my planning period I made a hostel reservation, then rushed down the hill after school to pack. We set off by six and made it just out of town when we realized we may have a problem. Several of us had written down how to get to the hostel from the highway, but getting to the city from Italy was more of an immediate concern, and much less sure. Some hazy memories of viewing the google map the day before and plenty of sign reading later, and we actually got there!

Tuesday night and Wednesday were spent wandering the city, looking at sights from The Sound of Music, enjoying Gluhwein and roasted nuts at the Christmas Market, and visiting a brewery.

Not bad for a random Wednesday... living in Europe has some advantages.

Quite a Day

Vomit and Lice, all in one day. All in about an hour, actually. Fortunately, neither were directly on me, though both my classroom and apartment currently smell strongly of cleaning chemicals. Huge thank you's to the science teacher, art teacher, learning specialist, and school cleaning ladies for making that happen!

I suppose that's life in an elementary school. Now, off to celebrate the music teacher's birthday!

Thanksgiving

First, last weekend's second adventure was Ikea! It was raining, so we passed on the chance to go back to Slovenia. Ikea is quite the place- a sort of Disneyland of home goods. There's people and stuff everywhere; there's even a map of the store. We finally got a mirror for our apartment, as well as lamps for our bedrooms and throw pillows for our bright yellow couch. We chose green and black pillows, so we now have a Packers half and a Steelers half of the couch.

This week was crazy busy, with a chocolate themed birthday party on Tuesday, conference night on Wednesday, a field trip on Thursday, and then a crazy day Friday with Thanksgiving dinner to cap off the week.

Friday was scheduled to be an in-service day, which means the kids leave at noon and we have professional development all afternoon. For the morning, we finished a movie we had started after the field trip the day before, then I talked about Thanksgiving as a World Cultures lesson, then we ate lunch and sent them on their way, through the SNOW! Between the two groups for the Thanksgiving lesson, it had started to snow a bit, mostly just flurries, but we closed the curtains to keep the distractions to a minimum. Our curtains don't close all the way, though, and from where I was standing near the computer, I had a perfect view through a gap to watch the flakes getting bigger and bigger, and the beginnings of accumulation. By the time we sat down to lunch in our spot next to a wall of windows, the full-on snow storm meant that the third grade ate very slowly as they all turned around to stare out of the window. I couldn't really blame them, and after they left, I wandered around looking for someone to go play outside with me. My southern CA friend was up for it, and we slid around in our not-appropriate-for-snow shoes for a few moments before heading back inside for professional development.

Four hours later, and we we off to very carefully walk to the first grade teacher's house for Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey had been cooking all day and everyone brought their favorite parts of the meal. We learned that Italian homes are allotted a certain amount of electricity at a time, and when you go over it, your power goes off. To turn it back on, you just have to hit the circuit breaker. Simple, when your circuit box is on the inside of your tall, electric-operated gate. That is not the case at this house. At this house, M runs and vaults over the gate to get to the box. The first time the power went out, we were confused. The second to fifth times, we were amused. The last two times, we were just tired of it!

We had so much food- turkey, potatoes with nuts (without the nuts), green bean casserole (without the topping), home-made stuffing, gravy (made by the science club leaders!), cornbread, macaroni and cheese, other mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, eggplant, Indian chicken, stuffed squash, Spanish omelette, apple pie, apple cobbler, pumpkin pie, cake, and that't not even touching on the appetizers! We finally got all of the food warm at once (Congrats, Mel!) and ate around the fire and recorded football game. I inhaled my food, but I think it was all delicious. We sat around and talked and drank wine for several hours, then had a dance party in the basement before finally heading home around 3 am. Quite a Thanksgiving, I must say.

When do you go to another country to see a movie?

When it's the first half of the last Harry Potter, of course, and it's showing in English. After downloading some of the earlier movies to re-watch during the week, we set off this morning for Koper (Capodistria) in Slovenia. We had chosen not to go with the group that went on Thursday night, because we didn't want to be out that late on a school night. We're so boring. (Yes, my friends saw it before you, if you're in the States, as they were home just before midnight, and we're six hours ahead.)

Anyway, my roommate and I met up with another teacher this morning, rented a car, and drove to the mall in Koper. It's only about a half hour drive, so it's really not that crazy, but it was a fun adventure. The movie was really good, though I won't say anything about it as to not ruin it.

After the movie, we wandered around the mall for a little while looking at art supplies and clothes, then got some food at a decent-for-Europe Mexican restaurant and just generally enjoyed the company.

We still have the car tomorrow (and the pass to get into Slovenia), so we'll see what sort of adventure transpires... I'm sure it will be something!

P.S. Post about my trips to Florence and Strasbourg will probably get written at some point...

Halloween

After carving all those pumpkins, I was ready for the Halloween party at school. I was planning to dress up as a ballerina, as usual, since it's an easy costume, but my students didn't like that. Here, Halloween is strictly spooky; all my kids were vampires and witches and zombies and a mummy. When they heard my plan, they were clearly dismayed, though my suggestion to find a witch hat was also met with little enthusiasm. One child sadly told me, "well, that won't win the costume contest." I heard that all of the fifth graders were going as more normal things, like a soccer player, "but dead." I decided to embrace this philosophy and went as a dead ballerina, which was basically a simple ballerina costume with dead/zombie makeup.

We had quite a party, starting with academic stations, then a costume contest, and then dancing and snacks and games. We tried to watch the Halloween Charlie Brown to settle everyone down at the end, but we couldn't really hear it.

After we got everyone packed up with all the parts of their costumes and ready for break, all the teachers took a deep breath and went out for drinks.

I'm scared I'm going to turn orange.

I've got a big backlog of blog posts, so you'll have to bear with me. (And, in my continued procrastination, I just googled the etymology of that phrase. It comes from either a request for forbearance or bearing a burden together. And now I've put off writing for another 10 minutes.)

Three Sundays ago, several of us set off by train to the lovely medieval town of Venzone for the annual Festa della Zucca, the Festival of the Pumpkin. We explored the entirety of the little town while enjoying a whole range of pumpkin themed foods. These included pumpkin pastries and the absolutely delicious pumpkin pizza. The pumpkin gelato was sold out by the time our group got there. I also found the first type of wine that I actually liked! Unfortunately, it's pumpkin wine, which is kinda seasonal and pretty obscure anyway.

This was only the beginning of my pumpkin-filled week. The school PTA bought every class a pumpkin for Halloween, but most classes didn't have time to do much with them. I volunteered to carve ours, so that we would have a Jack-o-Lantern for the school Halloween party on Friday. I had a fun planning period with pumpkin guts up to my elbows and carved both a face and the number 3. By lunchtime, I also had 345 pumpkin seeds! (Yes, I counted. The kids estimated, so I needed to know the actual number.)

After lunch, both the fifth grade teacher and one of the fourth grade teachers had spotted the pumpkins and requested that I do theirs as well. Another face and the number 5 made me only a few minutes late for Italian class, and more than doubled my stash of seeds. That night, I added some oil and salt and roasted them. Once they were done, I had enough to fill a recycled spaghetti sauce jar! Interestingly, the fourth and fifth grade pumpkins were two different types. Though they looked the same from the outside, the insides were completely different.

Friday morning, the other fourth grade teacher mentioned that her pumpkin need carved as well, bringing the week's total to four, and well over 1000 seeds, which I kept as payment for the carving. After 5 batches of salted seeds, I started to get bored, so I also made a spicy version and my personal favorite, caramelized seeds. Yum!

Friday's lunch at school was Halloween themed, with pumpkin rice, pumpkin chicken, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin bread. I chose the chicken and bread, both of which were quite good.

It was all delicious, but I still don't think I will eat much more pumpkin soon, at least for a few weeks...

SotL in dance class

I am taking a dance class each week (in Italian!) and have been reminded of SotL things on more than one occasion. The big two:

1) The word "cambio" means change or switch. That guy from Taming of the Shrew was seriously not creative.

2) We did push-ups and sit-ups to "Personal Jesus" last week.

If that doesn't mean anything to you, you have never been in SotL.

Other notes from class:

1) This is my third language and fourth country for dance classes!

2) I am getting quite good at the numbers 1-8 in Italian.