10 days left!

That's right folks, I will be on a plane on my way home in 10 days! It's kind of a bittersweet thing; I think I will be ready to go home though. =) Here's the update of the last few days and such.

Last Wednesday:
Mom moved her stuff over here from the hotel in the morning, but I was reeeeally not feeling well at all so I was pretty much crashed on the couch until 1pm-ish. I finally dragged myself up and we headed off to lunch. We got to the O'Leary's at about 2pm and both had the Larry Bird club sandwiches (BLTs basically), which were really good. I also got my french fries!! YAY! They also had a ton of Boston sports memorabilia, which was really cool.


Red Sox wall



Celtics wall


Then we headed off to Tivoli across the street! We walked around there for about 4 hours and bought tons of things, so much that we couldn't go on any rides because we had too many bags. =) My mom also took a picture of a couple at a booth dressed in full Viking gear, which lead to us chatting with them for at least an hour as well as buying a bunch of stuff. I now have 3 beautiful (handmade in Sweden) glass bead necklaces! The couple, Jacob and Hanna, told us a ton of cool stuff about the Vikings and a little bit about Sweden. It was really neat!


We finally tired out around 7pm and headed home for dinner.



Thursday/Thanksgiving!
I headed off to school and mom stayed home at the apartment, where she proceeded to vacuum, do the dishes, and wash most of my laundry! (Thanks Mom!!!) =) My day was very long and frustrating, mostly due to some issues I've been having with my teacher there. On top of that I also fell down about 5 stairs at lunch and bruised my leg, shoulder, and arm up from catching myself on the banister. However, things got better from there!

Mom showed up at school around 3pm, spent a few moments chatting with Carolyn and Mairead and then we took off. I'd had an issue with my phone in the morning so we walked to the prepaid phone shop (turned out that I'd just been randomly outside of the service range) and she lovingly put up with my ranting for about 30 minutes. =) We then went on to Bettina & Jan's house around 4pm, where she got to meet the whole family except Victor. They were very sweet and Bettina made several yummy baked things. We stayed there until a little after 6pm to go to the Hard Rock Cafe and Bettina insisted that I come over for dinner sometime this week. Not sure when that'll be, but it'll be nice to have dinner with them again before I leave.

me, mom, Bettina, Amalie


We got to the Hard Rock Cafe at about 6:50ish and went into the back room with a bunch of other Americans. It was way funny to be in there and listen to everybody talking about the difficulties they've had around here and stuff. A few minutes after the food came out, our waiter Lucas came around to the tables and said that he had bad news....there was some sort of problem at Tivoli (which is right next door) and the electricity was going to be shut off in 20 minutes! But our meals were free!! We quickly ate the not-so-great food and cleared out, saving $80.

(Mom's plate, obviously. My food didn't touch on mine!!)

On our way back to the station we walked past Tivoli and noticed people were still going inside, so we asked the security guard. He told us that it was just a problem at the front gate and that we could go in for free "as his guests." That saved us about $38! At that point we figured that we didn't want to press our luck too much, so just went on the rides that were closer to the ground instead of the giant swings ride that I had wanted to go on. We went on the smaller swings and the ferris wheel and had a lot of fun. =)






Friday:
Like I already posted, that was the day mom left to go home & I was left alone here. It was a really bad afternoon/evening emotionally though. I'm actually starting to look forward to being home in a few weeks, just for the comfort of being in my own country again. It's so uncomfortable to be in a foreign country and trying to do everything by myself. Like I told my mom, it's exhausting trying to blend in and pretend to know what I'm doing!! It's also not nearly as much fun to be a tourist on my own. I'm also REALLY sick of the few tv stations that I can watch in English and nothing being open past 7-8pm at night!!!


Weekend:
I perked up some over the weekend though. I just relaxed for almost all of it and it was GREAT! I'm finally just about healthy again and rested up. =) Saturday was beautiful and I ventured out wandering for a little bit, but yesterday was very cold and rainy.

The end of my street



Today:
School was surprisingly better today. Carolyn and I chatted a bit about some things and hopefully things will also get better after the open house on Wednesday afternoon. The kids are rushing to complete their imaginary city brochures by then, which makes things veeerrrry stressful lately.

I was also somewhat efficient today and got a lot of things done, including a bulletin board that I've been trying to get together for a few days. Yay! The kids are also making a lot of progress on their brochures and I'm much more confident that they'll all be done in time. =)

It was really really cold today though. It was snowing like crazy this morning and randomly on and off all day. They don't often get snow here so the kids were really excited about it (and took foreverrrrr getting all of their snow gear on and off)!


Plans for this week:

• Hopefully getting things done on my teaching portfolio, I have tons of pictures and other "evidence" but gotta start plugging everything in!
• Getting Carolyn to sign off on my teaching hours that I've done here
• Hanging out with Mairead and Faye next weekend and being tourists and having lots of fun!!! I'm way excited for this and determined to make it happen. =)
• Cleaning/organizing the apartment because Casey & Marie come home next Monday!
• Taking tons of pics at the Open House on Wed. for my portfolio, since I did a lot of full responsibility teaching during this project because I often had my own groups that I worked with every day.
• Probably staying after school very late tomorrow to laminate all the brochures and finish getting the room ready for the Open House (which is actually during the schoolday, 2-3pm).
• ENJOYING MY LAST FULL WEEK IN THE COUNTRY!!!

School & stuff

So sleeeeeepy, but I'll try to update more about life (and be as concise as possible).


School:

• I really like the teacher that I'm working with. Carolyn's from England and has been teaching for over 20 years in pre-k, k, 1st, and in 3rd for 2-3 years I think. She's very nice and willing to help me in any way, as well as wanting me to jump in as much as possible. I started out my first day working with a spelling group of children who barely speak English!! EEEEEK!
• Carolyn also likes me though, since I wasn't afraid to jump in and tell kids to quiet down or stop fooling around even on my first day. (I'm totally my mother's daughter on that one!!) She's also super excited that I told her I actually enjoy organizing paperwork and stuff. I'm going to be in charge of organizing her (and the other 3rd grade teacher, Mareide's) huge notebooks of assessment paperwork. =)
• Our class, 3A, consists of 20 children..... 11 girls and 9 boys. Of these, I think only 2 kids are actually fully Danish! The rest of the students come from a wide variety of countries including several from America, as well as students from Japan, New Zealand, England, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, and more.
• Many of the students speak several other languages in addition to English. One boy was telling me that he's fluent in 3 languages and working on learning 2 others!! FIVE languages at a point that most American children can barely speak ONE! Oyyyyy.
• However, there are also 5 children who speak little-to-no English. The best English-speakers of this group: boy who moved from Latvia (speaks Latvian & Russian) sometime last year and a girl from Japan (speaks Japanese, duh) who moved in about April. Then, there is another girl who is also from Japan and came in September. And at the very bottom, speaking/understanding almost no English at all, are a set of boy-girl twins who moved here from Hungary (speak German only) about 3 weeks ago. I feel really bad that these kids never know what's going on in the classroom!! Luckily, there are several kids who can translate for the twins and one boy in the class who can translate into Japanese for the 2 girls. (The Latvian boy understands a good majority of English phrases now.)
• Aside from some language barriers, these guys are pretty similar to my 3rd graders from home. This class seems to be a little ahead of where my MA students are in their math and writing, but just as loud and energetic!!!
• I have the day off tomorrow because they're having a professional development day that's about things unimportant to me, so Carolyn said not to bother going in at all. YAY!

Family:

• They are still wonderful and I'm going to miss them all very much when I move on Saturday. =( Bettina, Jan, and I have been chatting quite a bit more lately and it's been a lot of fun.
• I bonded with Amalie last night over Grey's Anatomy episodes that I'd downloaded. I really do like her a lot, I just haven't socialized with her too much. I usually just kinda freeze up and don't know what to talk about with her. She's unlike any 16 year old girl I've ever known, but not in a bad way. She seems very mature for her age.
• Victor has finally started interacting with me more!! In English even! He's just started really want to know what we're all talking about in English and is always asking what we're saying. Tonight we went to Saskia's apartment and he asked Bettina about where I was going to be moving to, then said that he really wants to visit me at the new apartment. I also saw him looking at a calendar later, counting how many days until I leave. Way cute!
• He came in here a little while ago and asked carefully in English (after Jan coached him how) if I wanted some tea. Then, he sat next to me for a few minutes just watching me checking my emails and stuff, just wanting to hang out I guess. Although it might have been that he was hoping I'd show him pictures and videos again, like I did last night. (Nothing is better than watching camp staff members dance and try to build a human pyramid!!!) He also has been following Malthe's lead in saying hello, goodbye, and goodnight to me in English all the time. He's a really sweet kid once he starts opening up some (and isn't in a bad mood)!
• And Malthe is still adorable. I'm going to walk him to school tomorrow morning because Bettina and Jan both have to work and Amalie is staying at Saskia's for a few days. He was at a friend's house this afternoon, but Bettina told him that I was going to be bringing him to school in the morning and he just got a huge grin on his face. He's very excited to spend time with me! =) He has really been trying hard to learn English to speak with me and is always asking Bettina or Jan how to say something to me. When we got home tonight he came in and said, "Here, a present for you!" and gave me a ring made out of twisted copper wires. That and his huge smile just made me want to melt. Where can I order a kid just like him???? I think I'll miss seeing/listening to him the most! =)
• Love love loooooove this whole family and I will definitely be back visiting them a lot before I leave! And maybe I can convince them to come see Massachusetts sometime so I can show them there's more to the US than just NYC!!

Coming attractions:

• Bed ASAP! I barely slept last night because I couldn't fall asleep (and could hear Victor talking in his sleep a lot, teeheehee), it was a very long and loud day, and I've still got to be up early to get Malthe ready and walk him to school.
• Thennnn, I'm off to find out about getting a prepaid cell phone to use while I'm here....as well as do some shopping!!
• Bank to cash in travelers cheques, I'm down to about $20USD from the $150ish that I started with.
• Roselle, my professor/supervisor, is coming to visit and "observe" me teaching here from Friday-Tuesday! Short trip but I'll introduce her around to everybody and she's coming in to the school on Monday before she leaves.
• Saturday is when I move to Marie & Casey's; I'll update more on that later in the week! They're both super busy and things are a bit crazy with it all, but still good.

Okay, I've really got to go sleep now. I've had to correct about 15 typos in the last 2 min. of writing, eek!! Love and goodnight.