Surprises at School!

Today's school day was productive.  We worked with Carol again and finally finished up all the curriculum plans for the year, for all 10 classes that we teach.  What a big relief!!    :-)   Carol also went through all the notebooks of supplementary materials and got them organized to use with the new textbooks.  Now I'm starting to reorganize the cabinets of materials and familiarize myself with what all is there.  It feels great to have a handle on things after all Carol's help!!  We may actually be able to survive after she leaves next week.  ;-)  

This afternoon when we were in the workroom, we were summoned to the door and asked to come up to the classroom for the V's ("five's", which are like our seniors).  The students seemed very pleased and excited about something as we followed them upstairs.  The entire group of V's (Tim teaches 1/2 and I have the other 1/2) was there, sitting in their desks expectantly as we entered.  One young man formally invited us to the class Stužkova in November, and two girls handed us our invitations.  Now, these invitations are obviously in Slovak, but for Carol, Tim and me, they created special English versions, complete with rhyming lines.  I am not sure of all the details, but evidently all the year's future graduates are presented with green ribbons (like on the invitation) signifying their stature, which they wear the rest of the year until they graduate.  It's a big honor, and so the families hold the Stužkova's, which are very large celebrations;  it sounds like a giant early grad party!  So we are excited about experiencing it!  

The 3 American teachers with the V's and the Stužkova invitations!

Our Stužkova invitation - notice it's Mrs. and Mr.!!  :-)  Love it!

 There is a lot of excitement in the air as final preparations have been made for the big anniversary celebration for the school tomorrow.  It will be quite a big wing-ding from the sounds of things!  We are to meet at the church at 12:30 for the 1:00 service.  So our morning is free, as none of the teachers are going in to school tomorrow before then.  We were thinking we'd go finish lesson plans for next week, but that's already done.  YAY!  

Part of the anniversary bulletin board with the Global Missions volunteers.  

The other bit of excitement today involved a large police helicopter landing on the grassy playing field in front of the school and taking off again --- twice!!  We're not really sure what it was all about, but the police station is just across a parking lot, and some teachers figured it was transporting criminals.  We're just glad it wasn't us!!  LOL!!   Needless to say, the students were rather distracted by the extremely loud engine noises outside.  I have to admit, that was a first for us as educators in terms of a new kind of classroom disruption!  

The police helicopter right outside the teacher workroom window!
(Note our green flat in the background!)

Some of the students gathered at the windows.

More students watching the helicopter (and waving at the crazy American teacher dashing outside to take pictures!)

After school, Tim went running, but I thought it was going to rain, so I chickened out.  (It didn't rain until later, so I lost out too!)  Anyway, I had yesterday's laundry to fold from the drying racks and a new load to wash and lay out on the racks, plus I had to make supper to put in the oven later.  My English student, Eva came at 6:00, so I put the food in to bake while we had our lesson, and Carol joined us for the meal at 7:00.  Tim studied Slovak while I was teaching, so I'll need to catch up this weekend for our next session on Monday.  

So, another short teaching week has come to an end at school.  We are daring to hope that we might actually get to teach ALL our classes EVERY day next week, with no days off from school for celebrations or trips to the immigration office!    :-)