Ending Year Two

Hello!

As of when I am writing this it is summer for Matthew and I! At a very cool 11 degrees C (about 52 F), we now have green and sun! We are headed toward the white nights (the lightest day is June 21) so there is a lot of sunshine now. This past year was, for me at least, very different than last year and just as much of a blessing. Our students and the whole community of the school gives so much to us and we adore being here.

As always, pray for the coming school year. We are starting to realize there isn't really a "normal" year at IA. :-) So far it looks like I will be teaching all of English for 7 - 12 (the upper three grades would be combined so it's not as big as it sounds) and Drama, which I have never taught before. Matt will be teaching Russian History, Ancient History, Medieval History, and World Geography. As always a lot of students will be gone but it seems that we will be gaining new students, which is a huge praise! Keep the school and board members in your prayers for this next year.

And on to the pictures! This week we only had three days of school and before officially being in summer vacation. Monday was a moving and field-tripping day, then Tuesday was Field Day. It was freezing cold for the time of year (though one of the Russian teachers told us the coldest it had ever been on that day was 1 degree C in the 1940's) but the students were running around and stayed plenty warm.

Three legged race

Wheelbarrow race

The teams were all a different color and were led by a 7th grader and an 8th grader. 

The end of the team has a tail the others are trying to grab. Here is a face off with blue, yellow, and red. 

Egg toss! In the very front that tiny Japanese girl was fascinated with her crushed egg. :-)

Tug of war! The black and white teams dominated this one.

Mr. Z announcing the winning teams. Red came in first and white came in second. Very fitting since our school colors are red and white!

 Graduation was yesterday afternoon. We had a "big" class of five students, but two students who had been with the school since kindergarten were also able to be there for graduation which was really fun for the students. They all gave speeches and they were very well spoken and touching. They asked their Bible teacher (and father to one of the boys) to give the charge to them. His charge was that they are a success if they love God through loving what they do.

The seniors with our headmaster.

One of the girls drew a picture of who is in her heart to show visually what was hard for her to say.

The siblings of the seniors sang a song with the seniors. 

The high school choir 

The whole school, K - 12, singing "This is my Father's World/He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"

It is very encouraging to see the school growing. If you look at this picture from last year (this song is a tradition) you can see how much bigger we are this year. 

Yearbooks were passed out and signed, picture were taken, hugs were given, and then a group of the teachers headed off to one of the only Mexican places in St. Pete: Tres Amigos! If you look you can see me peeking out from behind Matt. 

And that wraps up the school year for us! Our summer plans include my parents arriving in a few days and going to Sweden shortly after that! 

Thank you to everyone who has supported us through this year. Your prayers, emails, letters/cards, and donations are what strengthen us through each year!

Saying Goodbye

The end of the school year is always a bittersweet time in any school, but these feelings are perhaps even greater at international schools.  The strange environment created by throwing together students from all around the world often creates an atmosphere where people are willing to connect on deeper levels with each other. Your friends are your family and having to say goodbye can be one of the most difficult things someone in this situation can ever experience.

This past week has been the beginning of the goodbye process for many students and families at IA. This Wednesday is graduation and the formal end of the school year, but there have been a number of events this past week that are building up to that final stopping point. As we've mentioned before, IA is having an unusually high number of people leaving at the end of this year. In addition to our five seniors (7 if you count two students from that class who left earlier in the year), we have a large number of students returning to Korea and a significant number of our core missionary families who will be going on year-long furloughs starting this summer.  While most of those missionary families should be returning for the following year, next year will certainly be different and there are no guarantees that someone who leaves will be able to return.

Because of this, our school puts a lot of emphasis on saying goodbye well.  We talk about it, provide workshops for students to help transition, and do things like have special time set aside in chapel to publicly celebrate and say goodbye to students who will be leaving.  This past Wednesday was the final chapel of our school year and in it each of our five remaining seniors had the chance to speak and afterwards was a time for classmates and teachers to speak as well.  It was a very emotional time with many tears shed and marked the beginning of the end of a chapter in the life of many of our students.

Friday at school was the awards ceremony. Students from grades K-12 received awards for their academic work, character, and participation in activities like drama.  The kindergartners had their graduation ceremony and a good time was had by all! The ceremony helped bring the last full week of school to an end and was another chance to bring parents, teachers, and students together.

Friday night we had our final youth group meeting of the year and continued the goodbye process.  The seniors asked for a time to answer some questions and to pray with the group. We all wrote questions, some funny, some serious, for the graduating class and spent some time asking them their thoughts about graduation, going to college, moving to America (all five of this year's graduating class will be going to college in the U.S.), and their thoughts about leaving Russia. Then we took time to pray for everyone in the senior class before letting other students who will not be returning share their future plans and praying for them.  Once again it was a very emotional experience. I'm so glad that we can help give our students a place to cry and share their emotions.  One of the reasons Amanda and I wanted to stay was so that we could better take part in the lives of our students which often means having to deal with the emotional strains of getting to know wonderful students only to have them leave, often unexpectedly.  The longer we are here the more we feel those same emotions, and hopefully as a result, the better we will be able to care for our students. The night ended on a high notes, though and we ended with food and a slideshow of pictures from over the years which brought back many fond memories:-)

Because our day had not been long enough, Amanda and I left from youth group around 10 at night and immediately headed back to the school where most of the students were returning for the final lock in of the year.  We had agreed to chaperone it, which made for a monstrously long day with school, a Russian lesson for me, youth group, and then a lock in.  The lock in was a lot of fun and while I only managed an hour and a half of sleep (Amanda got a couple more than me), it was another great time to let the students have fun and to spend time talking to them. Sitting around on couches at 4:30 in the morning (and looking outside and seeing that it is completely light out) provides a great opportunity for bonding and conversation and sharing funny stories that you don't get in the classroom. I know that moments like these are some of the ones that our students will remember most clearly, and that we also will look back on.

Final chapel, final youth group, final lock in.  All of this leads to the final three days of school week: prom, field day, and graduation.  It has been a good year and the past few days have been a good reminder of what life is like for our students and why we love being able to do what we do at IA. Our students are some of the most talented and wonderful people we have ever had the chance to meet and we are so blessed with the chance to invest in their lives in ways that are not possible in many other schools or countries.  Life in international schools is always in a state of flux and semi-chaos and this past year has been no different and the coming year promises more of the same, but the opportunities that we have make it all worthwhile and something we would never trade.

Here are a few photos from some of these recent events:

Kindergarten graduation.  Armed with a year's worth of education, we send them off into the wide world of elementary school.

A handful of the younger elementary students provided a musical interlude to the award's program by performing a worship dance.

Amanda gives out middle school English awards.

Game time at youth group.

This particular game involved trying to secretly pass a cucumber.  Much hilarity ensued.

I gaze contemplatively across the room.

This game required people to move chairs depending on how they answered certain questions. The point of the game is that eventually most people will end up sitting on someone else's lap and large piles of people will form:-)

Finally it was time for the lock in. Amanda and I weren't the only ones tired after such a long day.  Most of the students ended up falling asleep before too long, although the 9th grade class bravely stayed up for the entire night.

A game of late night Mafia was part of the festivities.

And finally a little video from the lock in.  The students starting dancing everywhere, but sadly by the time I got the camera out it had mostly settled down. Still, this is a tamer taste of what was going on:-)

That's all for now!

-Matt

Basketball, Robin Hood, and a Banquet

Greetings once again!

It seems that once more circumstances have conspired against my well-intentioned desire to post here more often.  Last week I had planned on updating things here with a recap of recent events, but unfortunately both Amanda and I were sick.  While my sickness was pretty mild, Amanda's was worse and as a result our weekend left little time for blogging.  Thankfully we are both in good health and are preparing for the final two weeks of school.

This week marks the end of the grading period, with final grading needing to be submitted by Tuesday night.  Amanda is in the midst of grading a mountain of final papers from her classes, while I am preparing to give the last tests for all of my classes on Monday and Tuesday.  As always, things are a spring to the end, but we are hanging in there and it has been going well so far.

The end of the year always has a lot of special activities going on and this coming week has the school awards ceremony while the following (and final) week has prom, field day, and graduation.  While we will have a post and some pictures that will cover most of those events, I didn't want to forget to share pictures and offer a recap of the past few weeks of activity here at IA. Several weeks ago was the basketball ball awards dinner that Amanda and I attended to show our support for the team.  It was hosted at Anglo-American, the other English-language school in St. Petersburg.  While Anglo is a bit bigger than we are, they do not have any organized sports teams so this year two of their students were able to play basketball on our team.  It was a great experience having these students join the Cossacks and it provided a great opportunity to build up the relationship between our school and theirs.

Last Friday was a half day in honor of teacher appreciation day and it had two special events: the 4-6th grade play and the teacher's banquet.  As you may recall, last year Amanda and I were heavily involved in the 4-6th production of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  This year, however, we were not involved in any of the acting/directing, but were still able to enjoy a great performance of the "Very Unmerry Adventures of Robin Hood."  Unfortunately, Amanda got sick that day and had to go home early (and missed the banquet too:-( ), but I was able to take pictures from the performance.  Thankfully, Amanda had helped out with a special rehearsal the previous week and was able to see nearly the entire performance in its entirety.

After the play, we headed over to Old Tbilisi, the wonderful Georgian restuarant near the school where we had last year's teachers banquet. It was once again an epic feast of delicious Georgian food.  Because there was so much food left over last year, the school decided the scale things back a bit and only order hot and cold appetizers plus dessert.  It seems that the restaurant responded by reclassifying a wide swathe of entres as "hot appetiziers," because there was every bit as much food as last year!  That was a good thing, however, since it allowed me to take home a decent size stash of food so that Amanda could have some of it since she was sick.  It was a lovely banquet and we all felt very appreciated.  We are so blessed to be at this school and we have benefitted from an unbelievable level of support, encouragement, and trust from the school's administration and board.  It certainly makes it easier for us to serve here and do the work and special projects that we do, knowing that it appreciated in such a heart-felt way!

Finally, here are some pictures to go along with all of these events.

Coach Z speaking at the basketball banquet.

This delicious cake was made by one of our 10th grade girls who happens to be an amazing baker. The cake was actually quite large, but the picture makes it look smaller than it actually was.

The next pictures are from the 4-6th grade play:

The audience waits in anticipation for the show to begin.

Robin Hood and his men prepare to rob soldiers hauling a cart full of axes.

A bit of confusion ensues with Helga the innkeeper and Will Scarlet, who they merry men think has been kidnapped but is actually just eating lunch at the inn.

Maid Marian tries to convince Robin Hood and the merry men to marry her and her ladies

An archery contest with the Sheriff of Nottingham ensures, complete with live-action commentary.

William "Billy" Shakespeare even made an appearance.

And of course, Robin Hood also had his shot at the archery contest

There was even a beauty contest with a chance for some humorous cross-dressing:-)

A view of the action on the whole stage.  The painted backdrop on the right is one of the one's from last year's play.

The cast with Svyeta, the director after the performance.

The final few pictures are ones that I took from the teacher's banquet which took place a little bit after the play:

The table all be-decked with drinks and cold salads.

Our headmaster gave a speech, as did the chairman of the school board (the man directly to the right of her)

This photo shows the private room that we had the dinner in.  I've definitely come to look forward to this event!

This has been a very busy year and in many ways a challenging one, but also one full of blessing and growth. Amanda and I are both looking forward to having a chance to recover from it all over the summer break, but it is also always a sad experience to come to the end of the year and think about the students who will say goodbye to and all of the fond memories of the past four quarters.

We will have more in the coming weeks about the end of the year and about plans for the summer, so keep checking back!

-Matt