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

Lit Circles and Nails!

Little bonus post for everyone!

I promised pictures from my HS Lit Circles and here they are!
The book we're doing is Howl's Moving Castle (which you should definitely read if you have not) and for each session we have some activities, go over the reading from the last time, and then I read some to them and the rest they finish themselves.

The second time we met they were all tasked with bringing hats since Sophie (the main character) is a hatter/Hatter (it's her job and last name). We had some pretty awesome hats and then we described what we thought each personality would be like to match each hat (again, going with the effect Sophie has on the hats she makes) and looked at pictures of wild hats and described what ability we thought each might give it's wearer.

Me in my princess hat :-)

Students in hats!

 Two Fridays ago, we had disguises because the Wizard Howl loves going about in disguise to woo women and to keep people from tracking him down.Some of the disguises were planned and some were "improvised." :-) Then they took pictures of themselves and drew a disguise on top of the pictures. We had everything from a king to a Transformer like thing.

Improvised disguises

One of my 9th graders as a character she likes. 

Another 9th grader. Very cute picture of her too! :-)

 For last week we made slime since Howl throws a fit and slimes everywhere when his hair is dyed the wrong color. It's absurdly easy (you just combine corn starch and water) and it's what is called a non-Newtonian liquid because it is a solid and a liquid. You can shape it into a ball if you keep pressure on it but as soon as you let it go then it "melts." They had a lot of fun with it!

Once a solid and now melting off her hand! :-)

Looking a bit nervous! 

And the final nail "set" for the next few weeks: The Great Gatsby. This was probably my most detailed and it took forever but I am pretty proud of it overall. 

Left to right (top): Daisy, sun/gold/light, money, Gastby's pink suit, and rain

Left to right (bottom): dream dust, T.J. Eckelburg's eyes in glasses, and the green light

So that's it for the world of English at IA currently! Tomorrow I announce the play to the students so there will be more about theater in the future.

Fall Spiritual Retreat!

Hello! 

This past Monday through Wednesday was IA's fourth annual retreat and it was a really excellent experience. The high school is much smaller this year and so the theme was "Close Encounters" focusing on the idea of coming closer to God and closer to each other. The students were also really wonderful and this was the smoothest and most organized retreat yet for Matt and I so it was a lot of fun for us as well. :-)

This year we had most of a building to ourselves. We were back at the Finnish Lutheran seminary and we were able to have this nice big room to ourselves instead of sharing classrooms with the seminary students. It was really nice because the evening sessions had the sun setting on the room and gave it that really nice glow. :-)

Our speaker this year works through English camps for youth in the city. He approached relationships with God and others through the topics of giving, sacrifice, and forgiveness. It was a really thoughtful approach and I think it resonated with the students. 

Matt and I teamed up with one of the students for games. This particular game involved students fishing out their partner's shoes and putting them on their partner's feet. 

Later in the afternoon we had team building games (which was new this year and I think it was a lot of fun!). This one involved leading a blindfolded partner outside to the playground where the rest of the games took place. 

One of Matt and I's funniest students decided to just pull his hat over his head and then say he couldn't breathe. He also spent the weekend telling me when I asked him if he was warm enough in shorts that it was "for fashion." 

Matt and some guys on a cool swing sort of thing.

The climbing rope wall thing was used to the full for the group games. First the students just had to get through the holes. Then without touching the ground and then without touching any of the rope. The reason this particular photo is up is because this student actually got stuck to much hilarity and Matt and I swear that the face he's making in this picture is exactly what you would find in a baby album of his. :-) I laugh very hard every time I look at it. 

lifting students through to keep them from touching the rope.

A nice scenic picture with the changing leaves!

We then played Steal the Bacon, which actually got a bit violent after they got the hang of how to play! You line up and numbers are called and you try to get the object in the center over your line in your hands before you are tagged, so there is a lot of kicking and throwing and such. 

Matt and Coach J jumped in toward the end. :-)

Worship!

We ended with our traditional bonfire. This was a really good time as well because students had a chance to share anything that was on their minds or that they had felt from the past days and quiet times. A lot of students shared about how they had worried since the HS was so small this year but how they felt that the school was family. It was a really encouraging time for everyone. 

And then we headed off into the sunset and back to school for today and Friday! This was easily the best retreat Matt and I have been to and we were very blessed to be there!
Thank you for all of your prayers and continue to pray that the changes and decisions that were made will continue in the students' lives.