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I am back!


After an extremely long break, I have realized that I miss having the records to go back to and decided to renew my hobby :)   Also please stick with me as I try to navigate different layouts and potentially even adding some videos.

Ilya on the beautiful Garmisch mountain top
What happened in the last give or take 6 months? A lot - too much to recap, but as highlights in terms of travel - we went to Greece (Athens, Cyprus, Santorini) and we went skiing in Garmisch.  Both trips were amazing but very different. 



Boys are doing pretty good in their respective schools.  Anton is learning how to add and subtract within 10, has learned probably 1/3 of the alphabet and is learning how to put the letters into words (not an easy task).   Ilya, who has changed schools this year, has pretty successfully navigated his transition from a small class of 5 kids to a classroom with 20 kids.  He's made several friends and has joined our local soccer team which practices every Wednesday and Friday for 1.5 hours.   Andrei is doing ok with his new school but Chris and I figured out the missing link in the last month.  The school/his teachers assign very little actual homework, but does expect kids to study because there are quizzes and tests on very regular basis.  Boy Scouts are also a pretty big part of his life now and he really enjoys that as well.  There are camping trips, there are merit badges to work on, there is studying for his rank...  First report cards are due to come in on this Friday and I have no idea why German schools do that, but on report card days kids only have 3 lessons (as opposed to normal 4-5).  Anton does not get grades, only written report from his teachers.  German is hard for the other 2 boys (lots of grammar studying this year), but other than that we are expecting pretty good grades.

Ilya got 2nd place in his entire pack in Pinewood Derby and 1st in his den (he is a Bear)

I've been studying a LOT of German and while I do not at all feel proficient, I do feel ok with a lot of interaction that deals with our needs.  I am planning on continuing on improving my German and will (most likely) have 3 hours twice a week (as opposed to 1.5 hours).  In the other news regarding me - I am feeling a bit confused about my life.  When we moved to Germany 4 years ago, we planned on staying between 2.5 and 3.5 years which means we were planning on moving back to the States last summer (like 5 months ago!) and yet we are still here and currently we do not have plans to go back.  We do not have plans to go back because we enjoy it ... a lot.  The kids are doing good here, we really enjoy freedoms they have here.  We still enjoy travelling and still take advantage of being in the middle of Europe.  We enjoy Chris having 6 weeks of vacation!  Lots of things we enjoy here and therefore not ready to go back "home."  But this also raises a question - are we planning on staying here forever? I am not ready to answer that question with "yes" yet.

Chris is as always busy. travelling tons for work and when not traveling still working a lot.  He got a bit of a "break" last week - he's been coughing pretty badly for a while and finally I got tired of it and told him to go to the doctor.  He listened and came home with a "yellow slip" which means he is not allowed to go to work.  This time it was for 5 days and thankfully he felt better after about 2.5 days of antibiotics so we knocked off a lot of random items on our never-ending to do list. 





Comments

Dana said…
I love these posts- please don’t stop!
1/28/2019 6:23 PM
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