Recognize this shot? Well, I just watched Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock) for the first time. It's a really clever movie. I was hoping to be able to show this to my 9th grade class to help them with their interpretation skills. One problem - I was watching it on a tape that had been copied from TV. Right when the movie was just about over (Judy dressing up like Madeline), the movie cut to some old TV show Simon and Simon. UUUGGHHH! So I just had to look online to see what happened. No one really wants to say what happened on their websites, but I have an idea: First there was Madeline, then there was Judy posing to be Madeline, then it turns out that Madeline never existed. But I don't get how.... somehow. I'd like to see some more Hitchcock. 

Anne and Kiseok had tons of fun at the ice skating rink last Friday.  

Please come!

A HUGE blessing for us is that you all sacrifice your finances and prayers for us over here in Vienna.

Another really cool thing would be if you could come and see what your money and prayers are supporting! I really believe that a short week in Vienna (or anywhere where God's kids are being loved) will open your heart to God's love for people of the world!

If you're planning a vacation for the summer or fall, please think about coming to Vienna. Granted, school won't be in session in the summer, but we can do our best to introduce you to the life we live here and are privileged to experience because of you.

We appreciate YOU and want to share what we do with you. Please bring your family to Vienna!

Free Thinkers

Another Kiseok moment...

I mentioned today how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years because they wanted to live life their own way and not follow God's way. They made dumb decisions, they kept going away from God. So, punishment came. Life in the desert, wandering, wandering, and more wandering.
Kiseok raises his hand as I finish telling this little story that related to the day's lesson on God's judgment, and says, "Mrs. Frank, those Israelites must have been free thinkers. Just like Abraham Lincoln. I'm reading a book about him, and there was an example when people were asking him if God was real. He was a free thinker."
Then he proceeds to make the connection between sin and "free thinking" and how we can think freely to make our own decisions, and often sin results from that.

Did I tell you I think he's a genius? I just really appreciate all the things he has to share and his sweet spirit about doing that. He's curious, so curious about EVERYTHING.

His parents are not believers, either, so if you think of them, pray for them. Mr. and Mrs. Kim. (I know everyone in Korea is named Kim, but still!) Mr. Kim is a diplomat in the Korean Embassy, and Mrs. Kim does a lot to help out around school. They have two boys: Kiseok in my class and Kiju in 5th grade. Both boys' lives have been changed by this school. They will spend eternity in heaven with Jesus because of what they have experienced here.

Cool? I think so!

Genetics?

During Bible this morning, we talked about the time when Noah's descendants built the Tower of Babel to try to reach God and worship Him that way. God punished them, though, because of their disobedience, by confusing all of their languages from one into many. Imagine in a moment you and the 10 other people you invited over for dinner speak 10 different languages. It may be funny, but it may be stressful, too, and your party may be quickly over. So, as we were talking about this, a question came from Kiseok, a Korean boy, that has been continually coming up in my class......

Kiseok's words:
"I get where all the worlds' languages came from, but where did all the worlds' skin colors come from?"

My students are obviously confronted with this daily, unlike most Americans, because V.C.S. is so international. I couldn't answer his question, but other students tried with answers like, "black people got black because they live closer to the equator." Not quite.
To figure this out, I looked on the internet for some answers. I found out that the answer lies in genetics. Aha! I took a genetics class in college...something good comes from my zoology degree from Miami University!
So I read and printed this article about the biblical history of skin color, and just spent a few minutes explaining to Kiseok a simple punnett square (genetics term). He loved it! He asked more questions, and wanted to keep the article. I think the kid is a genius.

I LOVE this job. Thank you for being faithful supporters so I can do this.

Well, this is really intended for a certain special someone. You know who you are. We saw this huge sign near our place and thought of you. :) 

Orange Party!!

If you want to see pictures of the Orange Party we had in combo with Anne's birthday, CLICK HERE.

Die Unglaublichen

Confused? Well, this is the German title for the movie The Incredibles. Anne and I saw it recently (in English) and really loved it. Clean, funny, and action-packed! I recommend it - and you can check it out right now!

Ready to go! 

Katie is coming! Katie is coming!

Our friend and Anne's old roomate, Katie, is coming to visit us tomorrow! She has been in India for the last year as a missionary, and is on her way home to the U.S. We are SUPER excited to see her and hear about her year there. Yahoo for visitors!

Take the hint....we want YOU to visit, too! We have a room all ready for you!

Long Day

So, generally Friday is pretty fun because we get to wear jeans and most everyone is in a better mood because the weekend is flirting with us. In my 9th grade Bible class, it was good. I mean, I actually had a student ask me a question about Psalm 20 on her own initiative!! That was encouraging. But on the lower side of things, PE was pretty much chaos. I had the middle school boys doing an indoors study hall since there was snow outside and because there is an elementary chapel going on which we would be pretty sure to disturb (where we need to go). So, maybe I made the wrong choice, because I had lots of ignoring me when I spoke, talking to each other, disobeying, punching eachother (in anger more than fun), kicking desks in anger, knocking over shelves with binders and books going everywhere, others laughing at the mad one, ripping papers and throwing things all over the place, etc.
I felt like I was being too gracious probably, but I still gave out 4 or 5 tallies (punishments/warnings), and had a few serious one-on-one discussions.
So, another teacher complimented me on my patience that was around for a little bit of it, but I still was pretty frustrated. I think I was on the edge of just giving detentions out like candy. I'm not sure if I maybe should have done that... there are always so many factors to situations like that, that make it more complicated. History.
Then after all of that chaos, Anne and I got work done after school, ate kebaps for dinner (a turkish gyro thing), and then went to the high school coffee house. It was a fun time of playing cards and talking and line dancing lessons. Well, I opted out of the dancing, but Anne was loving it. :)
After that - the usual ride home on the Strassenbahn and the UBahn. A little walking in the COLD (maybe 10 to 20 degrees F), and then in our apartment and straight to bed and sleeeep. A long day. whew!

Snow in Vienna

It snowed ALL day today! Yahoo! Huge flakes, too. I love watching it out my classroom window. Snow brings different challenges in Vienna, though, than it does in the Midwest. For one, we have no car, so we have to walk a lot in the snow. Secondly, the UBahns and strassenbahns run no matter what, therefore NO snow days. Sad news. Thirdly, they don't really plow here. You plow your own way. It's especially funny when you have to run through snow to get to the strassenbahn before it leaves without you. So, tomorrow I'm breaking out my boots no matter how dumb I'll feel in them. My feet will thank me because I have outdoor afternoon duty this week, which means I stand outside and watch kids play from 3:20 until 3:45, snow or no snow. EVERY kid at V.C.S. loves snow. I think that's cool, only when I'm not on duty. So it goes:).

I just had the 9th graders do an assignment of translating Psalm 1 into another language. For half of my students, they looked at the NIV and translated to their mother tongue. For the ones that English is their first language, they translated into "surfer" or "valley girl" or "cowboy" language. They've been spending a lot of time studying Psalm 1 in various ways, and I'm trying to help them focus a little more on interpretation right now.
I think it went over pretty well and most of the students read it outloud for the class. It was cool to hear the passage we all have been studying in so many different languages - Greek (modern), Shona (Zimbabwe), Malayalam (India), pidgin English, Indonesian, Sinhalese (Sri Lanka), Swahili, and German. I wish you could see some of the scripts that they use to write some of the languages - truly amazing that they write with such intricate and detailed and ornate lines and curls and stuff. Wow! :)

So it seems

that Annie has been quite the blogger recently. Way to go ACF!
I don't want to be left in the weeds - plus I have some things to say.
In just a minute....

Living Hell

You'd never imagine a blog title like this from a fourth grade Christian school teacher, huh? Well, life is not so predictable in Room 104 at Vienna Christian School.
I started a new novel with my class today called Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume. Hilarious book, if you haven't read it. No further were we past making predictions about the book from the cover and title when I asked my class what their thoughts were about having siblings, since the book deals a lot with 2 brothers and their relationship.
Gabe, a boy with a U.S. passport but who has grown up his whole life in Austria, immediately stood up, growled (no joke) and said, "it's HELL, LIVING HELL."
As you can imagine, I was shocked, while the rest of my class howled with laughter. I never expected this to come from his mouth, but in retrospect it might give me an idea of the realities of some kids' households, whether public or private, U.S. or foreign.
It's easy for me to laugh now because my student growled and yelled, but the truth is that Gabe's story is probably common among kids all over the world. Kids need love. That's why we're here.

Islam

This month we've been studying Islam in fourth grade. Interesting because I teach at Vienna CHRISTIAN School. It's part of our Social Studies curriculum, and it's paired with a study of the Middle East. I've been learning just as much as the kids!
We've learned biblical history of the Arab and Jewish nations, similarities and differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the five pillars of the Islamic religion. It's been really interesting, but the best part is when the kids begin to think out loud how this religion mixes with what we learn in Bible at V.C.S. and what most of their families believe. Today I was asked questions like....

Did people worship Jesus even though he was just a kid?
Which came first, creation or dinosaurs?
Where do animals go after they die?
Why should the Bible make sense for me if my name is not in it?
Don't Muslim people KNOW that what they believe is wrong?

These questions boggled my mind, but they led to interesting discussions about what means to share about Jesus with Muslim friends of ours, what heaven and hell will be like, and why Muslim and Jewish people don't believe in the New Testament because it makes so much sense to us.

Fourth graders are amazing. I am shocked daily by what they say and how they think about life and God. The other day Benedict asked me if Abraham was the hairy on the in Bible. I think he meant Esau. :)

Thank YOU for allowing me to teach them here. It's my favorite.

In Case

the link to the pictures that we sent in our email didn't work for you, you can click on this below. It should work.

Frank Fotos

Orange Party

Hey!

We're having an ORANGE PARTY tomorrow night for my birthday!

Yahoo! I'm so excited!

Fourth Grade Meets David Crowder

This week in fourth grade Bible we've been talking about how God made man in His own image, which means for them that God knew they would have freckles, be athletic, or have hazel eyes before they were ever conceived, and that when God looks at them, He must see some of himself too.
On Wednesday we talked about David, and how God planned all the days and events of David's life, and we recounted what we knew about David and read some in 1 and 2 Samuel, too. On that same day I told my class that in the Bible it tells of a time when David had such exploding love for God that he felt compelled to remove most of his clothes and dance in the streets while the ark of the covenant was being brought into the City of David (2 Sam. 6:12-16). 2 Samuel 6:14 says that "David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might." As you can imagine, my ten year old studnets cringed at the though of David dancing in his underclothes in public, but after we moved beyond that, I explained to them the reason why. He loved his LORD so much that he was moved to dancing. I want to be like that, and opened the kids to that idea, too.
I then remembered a song by the David Crowder Band that fit this idea, so I brought it in today. The song goes like this...

I will dance, I will sing
To be mad for my King
Nothing, LORD, is hindering this passion in my soul
And I'll become even more undignified than this
Some may say it's foolishness
And it's all for you my LORD

The song repeats these words, and recounts that event I told my class about David dancing. I played that song for my class today, and they loved it so much we played it three times! My day is made when things like that happen. I teach for that reason. To see kids get excited about something true. David danced for God in his underclothes, and hopefully my fourth graders will be moved in that way, too.
Thanks for praying for them, and please continue to pray that God will open opportunities like He did today with that song, and that I will take each opportunity like that to better prepare my students for eternity.

Comings and Goings

Winter is a time at V.C.S. when lots of students come and go. It seems strange to leave or begin school halfway through the year, but it's a reality here in Vienna. Many of the students' parents are diplomats from their home countries to Austria. Therefore, they are not governed by the school calendar so much. This is specifically true for Korean families.
Many Korean families come to Vienna because one of the parents is a Korean judge. Korea has a program where they send judges to other countries for one year to study another country's judicial system with the intention to come back and better the Korean system. This exchange year begins each February.
I have a student who will be leaving V.C.S. February 1st. Her name is Jeong Eun, and her father is a Korean judge. She has learned proficient English during her year here, and she has made friends too. She will go back to Korea in a few weeks, where she will return to one fourth grade class of five in her school, where each class has between thirty and forty students. She told me today that she was sad to think about leaving Vienna and V.C.S.
I believe, because of Jeong Eun and other students, that V.C.S. leaves a special imprint on students' lives forever, regardless of whether they come for one year or ten years. It is truly a place where God is honored and the goal is to prepare kids for eternity along with preparing them for the next grade. Kids frown at the thought of going home each day, let alone leaving for what may be a long time like Jeong Eun. I'm really not joking, either. My students are sad to leave each day, because in this culture lots of kids live in apartments in the city and their friends live far away. There is little opportunity to just play with neighborhood kids like in the U.S.
So, all of this to say, it's sad to anticipate Jeong Eun leaving, but I'm trusting that God will go with her back to Korea, too, and bring new students for us to love here in Vienna.
Please pray for those students leaving and coming, that V.C.S. will hold a special place in their hearts and that they will trust Jesus with their lives because of what they experienced here.