We are well into the routine of school now and we know what is before us. Liz is completely absorbed in her class of eleven. That may sound like a small class, but you must take into account that in one way or another all of her charges are special needs kids. It may be as simple as living in a foreign land with your parents in a secure, loving environment, or it may be more complicated. For some of her students, English is the third or even fourth language. For some, the parents are a melding of different backgrounds and cultures. For some, there is a decided lack of understanding of the English language. I will let her give the details of her first and second grade charges later, but suffice it to say that my contact with them tells me that she is very busy!
My students are nearly all Americans. I have one girl from Macedonia and one from New Zealand. The girl from Macedonia is delightful and quite a character. I enjoy her a lot in my Algebra 2 class. The family from New Zealand are great people also.
The school schedule for Thursdays changed this morning. I had been have 7th and 8th grade PE first thing Tuesdays and Thursdays, but today I found that because someone has volunteered to teach art, that the schedule was adjusted so that art may now be taught. The 7th and 8th grade now do not have PE on Thursdays. I have been having about twenty-five 9th through 12th grade students for PE late morning on TTh, but today only eleven showed up. I was told that some of the upper school kids were in art at this time. I should confirm that sometime soon. Three of the eleven went into the gym to play badminton while eight remained on the pitch for a four on four soccer match. That turned out quite well. We could emphasize passing rather than bunch ball and I even instituted offsides for this smaller group.
Right after PE comes lunch. In the divying up of extra assginments I volunteered for the lunch recess duty for secondary school. That means that right after PE, I went in to get my lunch (a sandwich, cookies, fruit and coke) and headed back to the pitch to wait for a soccer game to break out. The secondary school kids gather round the pitch to eat and then either talk or play soccer after eating.
Then it was off to monitor a study hall. For the first hour I have only three senior students in study hall. After the first hour, the 7th and 8th grade who don't take some elective magically appear for the remainder of the period. Today I helped the younger kids with their math assignment. Then, for the last period of the day, I tauhgt Algebra 2 class which is comprised of (so far) four interesting characters, including my Macedonian girl along with three Americans. One American girl lived for several years in Russian and my only boy grew up in Chile. Tomorrow and Friday I have my more academic loads of Pre-Calc, Calc and Physics. That is always a challenge to be properly prepared.
We came home from school fairly soon after school was out today. Rae is going out to eat with a couple of the other young elementary teachers. We were invited, but wanted a more relaxing evening. Liz is now napping after her strenuous day with the wee ones.
We celebrate any event here - big or small. This is because we can so easily see God's hand working for us in our lives. Also, Prague is a great city to celebrate in. It just seems to be a jubilant, happy place to us. Every day that the sun shines is spectacular. Cloudy days are still good. What did we celebrate last night? In my opinion it was my first haircut in Prague. I just sat and grinned and hoped that Dalibor would not take too much off or leave too many cut lines showing. In reality he did a spendid job, so celebration was truly in order.
So last night to celebrate Rae took us out to eat and we chose an Italian restaurant just about three blocks up the street. We had our first staff meeting last night, so we needed a break in the restaurant. We all had very tasty meals of pastas of various different sorts. Rae had a chicken lasanga, Liz chose a salmon gnochi and I took a penne chicken dish. We stopped by a larger-than-average potraviny and were again surprised to find so many Americans around this corner. We talked for a while with a couple from Nashville who were doing Europe and had been in the CR for about a month. Then we met another CISP teacher and her IMB journeyman roomate at the same corner while talking to the other Americans. And then a couple American young men came by and talked with the pretty ladies. I think they were college students here.
I will put a few recent pics on this blog to let you visualize what we see most days. First three shots of Liz's classroom.
The next pictues will be of my PE classes. The 7th and 8th PE sessions do not have an adequate place to meet, so I have been taking them to a park to place dodge ball - their game of choice. We walk about six blocks. You will see us on the journey.
Her are Ana and Igor, brother and sister from Serbia. You can barely see daniel and Johnny behind them.
Here are Ana, Sean and Travis waiting to get back in the dodge ball game after being hit and temporarily put out of the match. No one is out for long the wayh we play.
The crew is heading down the street on the way to the park.
Daniel (with ball), Johnny, Lukas and Cail are the last ones put out for this round. 
The picture at left shows a noon recess football game played by the secondary school kids. David has the ball, but is tightly (?) marked by Joshua, Amy and Teamea who are forming a tight line of defense to keep him at bay. Next you see my Physics class which consists of Roger and Emily - two stars and great kids. The last pictuer shows Caleb, Hannah, Teamea and Joana with JJ. JJ is the start student in the class, Hannah's Lion is starting to catch on more quickly now and may become the number one student. All for now. We are going to take a walk now.
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