Moving Day

Tuesday we were at school early for staff devotions.  Then we had only four classes because the students were dismissed at 11:30 so that the teachers could begin the moving process in earnest after lunch.  

Our wonderful 5.AP class hand-delivered this beautiful invitation to their Stužkova party.  Our November weekends are now all completely booked.  With three stužkovas, the ball for the II's classes (they've been taking ballroom dancing classes, so we are invited to this culminating event!), and the American Thanksgiving in Bratislava, it will be a busy month coming up!  :-)  

Our office got emptier and emptier as Tuesday afternoon went on.  There used to be 16 of us in our zborovna, and we have had lots of fun getting to know all the Slovak teachers.  We are all a little sad that we'll all be split up into smaller offices now, but our room is needed for the Prima class.  (We graduated two classes last year, but there are three new ones.)

Only two desks left.  Tim decided he needed to do a special farewell, borrowing an idea from the very last episode of M.A.S.H., our favorite show.  As the helicopters lifted away, they saw stones on the ground where the camp used to be......

Shortly after this, the desks and chairs for the Primas were brought into our former office.  We'll miss all our good times celebrating birthdays and Names days here, making each other hot tea, sharing treats, and having fun together.  The bulletin board with daily announcements and subbing schedules was in our office too, so all the other teachers with offices elsewhere also came in every day to this central gathering place, so we were really in the hub of activity and got to see everyone regularly.  Now we'll all be more isolated, so we'll have to make a bigger effort to keep connected!  

One of Tim's office partners, our Slovak daughter Katarina Joy,  in her awesome T-shirt from Raygun in Des Moines!  

Wednesday we had an all-staff meeting at 8:00 a.m., with a required presentation on safety regulations.  Our Slovak translators 'filtered' very well, which we always appreciate!!  Tim is really proud that he passed the 20-question multiple-choice quiz at the end with 100% correct - in Slovak!!  He's practically bilingual now.  (Oh, did I forget to mention that the instructor read out each question and the answer for every one??)   :-)  

The rest of the day Wednesday we got settled into our offices a little bit.  Eventually we were allowed to leave a little early, which was nice, since it was supposed to be a holiday day.  Saška and Ignace had some free tickets given to them by some guests in their Privat (cabin), so they took us to the huge Aquapark outside of town, Tatralandia.  It is absolutely enormous, with multiple indoor and outdoor pools, water slides and tubes, kids areas, food & drink, and lots of people there.  You'd think you were in one of those huge places at the Wisconsin Dells - really nice!!  One difference was that the outdoor pool was cloudy because it was the thermal spring water.  We enjoyed soaking in that!  The other difference was the sauna area with about 15 kinds of saunas.  It was beautiful, and I think we enjoyed that the most.  There was even a 'plunge pool' which was really cold, so you could cool off after heating up in the steamy saunas.  It felt just like in the U.P.!!  :-)    Going to the Aquapark was a great way to feel relaxed and refreshed after all the moving at school this week!