Amanda and Carrie in Vienna: October 2008

Friday, October 31, 2008

Fall Festival

On October 31st our school hosted a fall festival. We had carnival type games for the kids to play, snack to eat, and a musical concert for the parents. It was a lot of fun. The snack walk was in my classroom and I had a 1/2 hour slot at the fishing pond. It was a wonderful time to mingle with the parents and touch kid's lives on a different/deeper level than daily the classroom at school. Here is a video of the 3-5th graders singing one of their songs. They made me proud! Enjoy.

Fishing for some candy

Mr. Janett (the Elementary Principal) and Mr. Reynolds (the Elementary Art Teacher) looking tough and trying not to laugh for the photo.

Mr. Wells and Mr. Highley dressed as referees

The snack walk (like a cake walk but with snacks as the ultimate prize) in my classroom!

Miss Stevens and Ron Avery showing off the fishing pond prizes. You had to watch out when the fishing rods came flying over the wall to "catch" a fish (candy) they would whack you in the head!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Where's our car??!!!

For fall break Carrie, Bekah, RheaAnne, and I all headed off to Croatia. We had our rental car and our hostel/apartment rented and they were expecting us. Since it was a teacher work day we were able to leave after working 6 hours so we left around 2:00. We knew the trip would take us about 8 hours driving but we failed to include time to get lost and the unlost (if that's a word but you know what I mean!) It took us 11 hours to get to our location so we promptly fell into bed!

When we woke up in the morning we were amazed! The Adriatic sea was across the road from where we were staying and it was absolutely beautiful! We went to Split, Croatia (about a 30 minute drive from our hostel) and toured Diocletian's Palace. This palace is HUGE and it dates back to Roman times! It was amazing.

Well, before we toured this palace we literally drove in circles to find a parking spot. We finally found one on the side of a less busy street near a park. We checked for no parking signs and even looked in the cars already parked there to see if any of them had special parking passes. We couldn't find signs or special parking passes so we merely walked toward the palace. After dinner we came back to find that our car had, essentially, vanished! All four of us just stood there for a full minute before any of us could form an idea. RheaAnne and I realized that we needed to speak to people around us in the shops to see if they could either call help for us or simply tell us if they saw anything. Well, all four of us headed to this shop. I bravely went inside and asked the lady if she saw anything. She said "It has not been stolen." I said, "okay." She then preceded to tell me that the police towed it because we parked in a no parking zone. I was suddenly shocked as I know we looked and looked for any sign that would tell us not to park there. The lady told us where to go and got her friend to drive us to the lot where the police store the cars. The police were going to charge us anywhere from 300 - 700 Kuna (50 - 100 Euro) normally but they let us pay 50 Euro to get the car back and in 30 minutes we were on our way back to where we were staying.

We had a wonderful trip in the end. Croatia was warm and it was amazing to be able to swim in the Adriatic Sea. The water was a bit cool but fun none the less. We were thankful that the Lord was looking out for us the entire trip. We know that we could have had a lot more hassle and money spent simply to get the car back!

Friday, October 10, 2008

A request for a day off. . .

Yesterday, when Andrew walked in for the day he was dropping things out of his bag. So, I was helping him pick them up and try to keep them in his hands without dropping them again. While doing this I noticed that one of the things he dropped was an envelope with my name on it. I was suddenly glad that he had been dropping things because if he hadn't I would not have received the note! I quickly opened up the note before I received about 20 "Miss Brunker, what is that?" questions from my kiddos! I was quite surprised at what the note said! It was a letter (very formal) requesting a day off for Andrew for family business. I quickly thought, well, what would happen if I denied the request? It is fine by me if Andrew needs to be gone due to family reasons. It is the first time in 5 years of teaching that I have received a very formal request for absence letter! It makes me smile and very happy that the parents of my students completely understand the importance education and would take the time to write me a formal letter requesting a day off!

Sunday, October 5, 2008

A Very Long Night at the Museums!

Saturday was the annual Lange Nacht Der Museen (Long Night of Museums) here in Vienna. The tickets were 13 Euro each and you can go to around 100 museums from 6pm to 1am. It was a whirlwind of walking, talking, and taking everything in. It was cold and I was worried about our friend from California. She looked miserable at moments and I was afraid she would eventually turn in to a Popsicle!! She survived and I think she had fun. A large group of us started at the National Library this library looks like the library in Beauty and the Beast (the Disney version). It was beautiful even though the books on display were all about torture and capital punishment. I'm not sure what all that was about but the library itself was quite beautiful. We then all went to the Bible Center. In this center they had many different versions of the Bible. They were written in many different languages. I enjoyed the free postcards with Bible verses in German and the food that was from the time of Martin Luther. After this we all split up into smaller groups. Melissa, Leslie, Carrie and me all headed to the hat museum, shoe museum, and the snow globe museum. This was a bus route that we had to take to get to these. We accidentally missed the hat museum (the driver didn't tell us where we were and so we stayed on the bus!) so we went into the shoe museum. It was small but there were a lot of interesting shoes there. The snow globe museum was even smaller and they had a lot of snow globes. Apparently it is a family business and they let us put together little plastic Christmas trees that could go into a small snow globe. After this we went to the Globe museum. It was interesting but most importantly it was really warm inside. After that we went to the Natural History Museum and looked at many, many different species of birds and animals of various types and sizes. The elephant was huge! I want to go back here someday as we didn't get a lot of time to look around. We then went to the Planetarium. It was all in German but interesting none the less. I thought I was just about to fall asleep when the bright lights turned on and the show was over. This was around 1:00am and we then walked 10 minutes home! I'm glad I went but I am still recovering! Here are some pictures. Enjoy!