Holiday Post!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Matthew and I had our 3rd Thanksgiving here in Russia and it was a nice small gathering with our team. I made a rather labor intensive trifle (which involved making whipped cream by putting cream in a jar and shaking the jar till we had whipped cream) but it was pretty awesome so it was worth it. :-)

Matt's taking the picture but there I am. 

This metro is by where we met and it's been under remont since we moved here. The pillars are covered in sculpted glass and bronze bands. 

The day after Thanksgiving, we picked up a big box of presents my mother had sent (very exciting!) and then went to a game with our friends Masha and Jarod. We had amazing seats right behind the goal with no one in front of us! The tickets were cheap as well since it's the goal CKA is at the least. It was great too because you could see the expressions on the player's faces.

Here we are!

After the game, Jarod found this picture from the official CKA page and there we all are in the corner! So cool! 

Last night we went to hang out with Matt's Russian teacher/our friend and her kitty. She knew I love cats and offered to let me play with her lovely cat. She's very similar to Matt and I so it was a lot of fun to spend time with her. 

To complete our busy and fun break, we put up our Christmas tree today so we would have somewhere to put the presents. We have our usual tinsel in the Russian flag stripes. :-)

Last, but not least, it's been a while since I posted the book nails I've done so here they are! Some of the books we've done I haven't done nails for (like Lord of the Flies) but so far I've done 80% of the books we've read in all grades. 

Top row: The Giver, an apple, blue eyes, Gabriel

Bottom row: sunshine, snow, nature, music, love

Top row: a raccoon

Bottom row: love, the dogs' initials, the silver cup, the gold cup

Top row: a button, the letter H, a bloody knife, a scarlet kimono, a pipe

Bottom row: a train and Hercule's mustaches 

Top row: a compass rose, Violet, king and queen piece in chess, Turtle's braid

Bottom row: inheritance money, purple waves, Westing Paper Products stock, a crutch, fireworks

And this brings our busy life up to date! Matt and I both have had our observations by our academic principal and we both felt it went very well. It's always nice to get positive feedback so thanks for everyone who was praying for that. 

For Christmas, we are planning to go to Tallinn, Estonia, which we did our first winter here. We loved it so much we decided to go back. :-)
We are very thankful for all of you who pray, email, contribute, and keep us in your minds and hearts. You're the reason we're here and why we are able to bless and be blessed by the International Academy.

Lock In Time!

It's that time of the year again: the time when the students approach Amanda and I and ask us, as the youngest teachers at IA, to be the chaperones for a lock in.  This past Friday/Saturday was our third turn at supervising an IA lock in.  While it can be a little hard to motivate yourself, after a long week of school, to quickly turn around and then go back to school to spend the whole night awake with a group of teenagers, its always a lot of fun.

This lock in was easily the best one that we have been to, thanks to our great students.  This past summer one of my greatest prayers for this school year was that the students we would have would join together in new ways and that more people would step forward to take leadership and responsibility of things at IA.  With so many people gone this year, including most of the students/families who usually have taken the initiative to organize and lead things, there was both a real need and a great opportunity.

We needed students to step up in ways that they hadn't before, and now there was a chance for people who may not have had the opportunity to play bigger roles in student council, chapel, theatre, and other activities before.  The students have more than risen to the occasion this year!  We talked about this some after spiritual retreat back in September, but it is still encouraging to see the students continuing to build community and take responsibility in new ways.

Our student council organized the lock in and had a full slate of fun activities.  In the past things have tended to be a bit informal, which can be good and bad since it can result in a school full of students wandering around aimlessly at 4 a.m. This time, there were games, movies, activities, and a good mix of free time and group activities. They even had relatively healthy snacks, which meant that instead of eating a constant stream of cookies and candy throughout the night and feeling terrible the next day, I instead got to munch on grapes, peppers, cucumbers, and carrots (and some cookies too). They did a good job of picking fast paced, high energy games and slower games and alternating them so that people didn't get too tired at the beginning. There is a fine art to constructing a lock in to maximize fun and participation and minimize boring things like falling asleep.

Almost everyone made it to 5:30 a.m. without falling asleep, at which point most of the students slept for a couple of hours, although a few determined souls burned through the night and made sure that no sleep was had:-) I made it until about 6 a.m. but then finally fell asleep with my head on my desk for a little over an hour.  Amanda got a couple of hours of sleep as well.

Here are some photos that document the festivities:

Not much of this actually happened:-) For the record, this student was only pretending to be asleep when Amanda took the photo.

The Foosball table, possibly the single most popular item that exists in our school, got a decent workout during the lock in.

Students dancing and relaxing as they got settled in.

The 9th grade boys love to imitate their teachers:-) Here are two of our Korean students striking a Mr. K pose.

Twister was one of the many games that we played.

Our Japanese twins were particularly skilled at Twister:-)

We even had individual Twister!

With a floor covered with mats, the temptation to make a human pyramid was just too great.

Our high school boys can be quite acrobatic!

We played one game where you had to try to rip off the name tag on the back of each other.  It was a lot of fun and apparently based on a Korean game show. This student's name is definitely not Max, and I'm not sure why she was given this name tag:-)

More Foosball fun.

Spoons was another fun game that helped pass the late hours. For those of you with sharp eyes, the clock on the wall shows that this photo was taken at 3:26 a.m.

After a night like that, Amanda and I headed home to get a few hours of real sleep.  It's always fun to be able to spend time with our students at things like this.  It gives us a chance to get to know them better, and it gives them a chance to see a whole different side of us:-)

Thanks for reading!

-Matt

Catching Up

Hello again!

It's been a while since we posted here so I thought it was time to give a brief update about what has been going on these past few weeks.  In short it's been lots of school!  The first quarter came to a successful end and we had our parent teacher conferences and some teacher meetings.

Our school continues to work this year towards taking the first steps in the accreditation process, as we have mentioned in previous posts. Our main goal for this year is to work on documenting our curriculum.  Significant parts of our school do not have any written curriculum that can be used for our own reference and is an obvious prerequisite before we can begin an accreditation process. This will be an important step towards giving our school greater structure and stability.

The problem has been that with so many moves/changes/teacher turnover, it has been difficult to assess what has been done in each subject area/grade level from year to year.  The 6th grade class alone has had four different teachers over the past four years! Also, at the moment the middle/high school history sequence is something that I have devised on my own with minimal input from others. While that may suit me just fine, we obviously need to make sure that everyone as a school is onboard with what we are offering and is at least somewhat aware of the general scope and sequence of what is being taught in different subjects and at the various grade levels. So this year we are working to map out what we are actually doing, to learn more as teachers about what other teachers are doing, and to work towards creating a written curriculum and course catalog that will be the foundation for our school and a guide for any new teachers who come here.  It is an exciting and at times stressful process, and one for which we continue to ask for your prayers!

At the end of first quarter, in mid-October, we had our second annual International Day! The elementary school had activities all day, while for the high school and middle school it was a little more subdued.  However, the students did get the chance to learn how to play cricket in gym class and did an international-themed photo scavenger hunt at the end of the day. It's always fun to be able to celebrate all of the different countries and cultures that make up our school:-)

Our classes continue to go well, as do our after school activities.  I continue to work with one of my 10th grade students to help her with Russian history and Amanda's literature circles are still having lots of fun with the books they are doing.  Amanda's theatre class has begun work on the play now too!  Last Friday was the first after school practice to work out blocking the action for the play.  Theatre has been going well, but Amanda is understandably nervous since this is her first time doing it.  The students are having a lot of fun and it looks like once again IA has been blessed with a number of very good actors.  I'm sure we'll write more about this in the coming months as we draw closer to performance time in April!

Here are a few recent photos of things that we've taken for your enjoyment as well:

Gym time!  These are photos that Amanda took on International Day when she went to P.E. class to see them play cricket.  We rent a gym that is a short distance away from our school. Here the students are doing their warm-up stretches.

Jogging!

Here are our students attempting to play cricket.  One of our Australian students explained the game to us and had the equipment needed to play.  It was a learning experience for all involved since almost none of our students had ever played cricket before!

This is a short video of the action:-)

The next photos are all of familiar places. We went out this weekend to walk around downtown and ended up taking some pictures of the city at night.  It was lightly raining which added a nice reflective glow to everything.

The Singer building on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Canal Griboyedov.

The next several are of the Spilled Blood cathedral in all of its nighttime glory.

This is the wrought iron fence that goes alongside the Mikhailovsky Gardens.

The statue of Pushkin in front of the Russian Museum

Nevsky Prospect

The Eliseev Emporium. One of the more striking buildings on Nevsky Prospect. It is a store that sells all sorts of nice sweets, meats, cheeses, etc. The building was originally constructed at the beginning of the 20th century and has been renovated to keep up its turn of the century appearance.

The interior of the emporium.

In the center of the emporium is a giant pineapple surrounded by tables for people ordering food.  We had vanilla mango muffins:-)

Another image of the interior.

In the center is a self-playing piano.  There were also live musicians on a balcony for part of the time we were there.

And lastly, a photo of yours truly. Beautiful as always :-P

That's all for now!

-Matt