Checking in pre-European Vacation

I've guess I've fallen off the blogging wagon.  Time to get back on.  We'll post a recap of our recent road trip around Zimbabwe with pictures and videos once we are in Italy and enjoying high speed Internet.  This will have to do for now.

We've both been really busy lately getting lesson plans together for the week of school that we'll miss while we're in PYP training in Florence.  This is also report card time, so that is taking up a lot of energy.  The report cards  here are heavy on the report, not so much on the card.  Each "report card" is seven pages long, and that's before any of the specials area teachers add their pieces.  They don't involve any actual grades, rather its all performance based.  I like the idea of them alot, but I'm not a big fan of writing them out.  Everything else at school is going well.  We just had our big UN Day on Friday.  It begins with all of the students, staff, and lots of parents/guests in the auditorium, lots of little kids singing, some great badn performances, and then they have the flag parade.  We had 57 flags carried in by students; definitely a diverse student body here.  After the performances there is a tremendous amount of food from all over the world.  The parents and different embassies really get into it.  In case you were wondering, the US station served Mac and Cheese, PB&J, hot dogs, a chili cook-off, chips, choc. chip cookies, and lots of brownies, and this was all washed down with some Kool-Aid.  The rest of the world was filled with some amazing food as well.  The children did some educational things, bit I was too busy eating to see much of what was going on.  I did use the time to set up a softball game against the Japanese Embassy.  I actually think they were serious about being ready to play right then and there.  They won't play on school grounds though because they aren't allowed to drink and smoke...

I started playing catch with an American football (I hate that I have to differentiate that word), and kids starting running from out of nowhere to play.  I've been teaching everybody how to play, and we've managed several games.  We've got pretty big teams now, 5th to 11th grade all mixed, and they're learning pretty quickly.  They are learning offense at a much quicker rate: we're averaging way over 100 points a game.  We'll keep playing until my arm falls off.

The volleyball regular season is over.  The teams head to the ISSEA torunament in Tanzania next week.  The top team is amazing when everything clicks together.  My team (the second varsity team) is like a Disney sports movie, one kid who can jump out of the gym, but can't spot smashing it into the crowd, students who routinely miss the ball and hit themselves, a couple who get tangled in the net regularly, and a few young guys just learning the basics.  We managed to come together, and we actually won our last 2 games.  We'll see how things go next year.  Basketball try-outs start in 2 weeks.

Juno is getting bigger everyday.  She is settling down, and now that she's allowed to sleep in the bedroom with us, she's stopped eating everything that she can fit into her mouth.  She got spayed last week, and she's already back to running laps around the house.  We get her out as often as we can.  Our friends, John and Danielle, have her sister, so they have weekly wrestling matches.  There definitely will be no leaving her in Africa when we move back to the States.

So there you go, nothing too new going on.  The road trip that we took was amazing, and we'll get to posting that.  We are returning to the Falls in January with Winston and Maggie (Jen's sister and brother in law).  This time around we've got an overnight canoeing trip on the upper Zambezi, and we'll be going all day rafting on the lower part. 

I'll make sure that the next bunch of posts are much more exciting.  Jen and I are headed back to hang out at the pool (not normal for us in late October), then going to a Motown music festival, and I'm heading to an Embassy house to watch NFL all night.

We'll catch you from Florence, Italy starting on Thursday.