Winter is Coming with Kicks and Punches

The time changed this past weekend, signaling the approach of a stinging winter in Vienna. Ooooh. Bring out the turkeys, cookies and sprinkles, white lights, and presents! I'm ready for the holidays! Really, though, yesterday it was completely dark by 5:15 p.m. in Vienna, and we were shocked but probably shouldn't have been. It has been this way year after year here, but after long summer days our shock is still renewed.

In other news...Baby Frank has kicked its first kick and punched its first punch! I'm pretty sure that over the last few days Baby Frank has begun his or her workout routine that will supposedly continue for the next few months inside the cozy space of my belly. It feels like little hits now and then, and sometimes it feels like bubbles inside. A sensation I've clearly never felt before. Woah. Signs of life. That's really amazing.

Smart Car

We just had a 4 day weekend since it's Fall Break for VCS. Anne and I went to Guntramsdorf - the town where I used to live - and stayed at the International Teams hospitality house. It was amazing weather, inexpensive, and relaxing. Plus - we rented a SMART CAR!! Those things are so cool - and it actually didn't feel cramped or anything inside. It has a sort of manual/automatic transmission.

Anne Frank in Holland

So yeah, Anne is going to leave me for a few days. Sad.
But as I was reading what she wrote, I had a thought. It might seem to you that "Woah!! She's going to Holland just for a conference! Dang, it must be nice to do crazy travelling like that!" Or maybe something else along those lines.

Well, from a European perspective, it's not quite as big of a deal. It's more like saying I'm going to a conference just outside of Denver, Colorado. Cool, maybe. Awesome if you love the Broncos. But otherwise, it's not THAT big of a deal. It's a little more like that for Europe - lots of countries that aren't so big, close together. Oh yeah, and the school is paying for it. :)

So, there's my 2 cents.

National Holiday in Oesterreich

Today is a National Holiday in Austria. 50 years ago today the Russian, American, British, and French occupation officially left Austria and Austria became it's own free republic since before World War 2. It was an exciting day for Austrians. John Foster Dulles was one of the 2 American representatives who signed the treaty giving freedom to Austria at the Upper Belvedere Palace on October 26, 1955. Most Austrians are not particularly patriotic, but today they'll celebrate with a military parade around the city's Ringstrasse, which means Ring Road, and I believe that some Russian soldiers are coming to pay their respects. Chris and I are going to check it out after our work day at school. Congrats to Austria!

Trip to Holland!

Good news! I was asked by my principal to attend a conference put on by the European Council of International Schools with four other V.C.S. staff members in Holland in a few weeks. I'm so excited for this professional opportunity to learn more about international education and bring it back to the others. I will be attending workshops and seminars primarily focused on elementary education, curriculum development, and student learning. The conference is in The Hague, which is close to Amsterdam, and I think we'll have one whole day to check it out, which is fun. Here are some links for those of you who are interested in more information about the conference or The Hague.
www.ecis.org
www.denhaag.com
I'll keep you posted in a few weeks on what I learn:).

Photos from Fall Festival

Fall Festival at VCS

This last Friday was a really fun annual event at VCS...Fall Festival. It's a night when families and teachers come together and we play all kinds of games and enjoy yummy treats from all over the world. I'm loving the international food aspect of living here. Not too long ago I went to an Indian cooking class put on by some Indian moms at our school. Ohhh, yummy. I'm inspired to branch out in my cooking skills.
Anyway, at Fall Festival all the choirs and bands perform, and some elementary kids too. There's a raffle for the Library to earn money to buy German and Reference books, and the prize is a fully equipped Thanksgiving basket. I can't even imagine the value it has, turkey included! We didn't win...bummer. There's also a Student Council Pie in the Face contest, where people put money in jars with teachers' names on them. The jar with the most money in it requires that the teachers whose names are on it get pied! Chris was pied last year, but this year he didn't win. The pies were still extremely funny, though!
That's about it from Fall Festival. I helped paint faces for kids, and Chris roamed around and did security since he's on the Administration Team this year with his new job. It was a really fun night! The photos above are from that night:).

16 week portrait of Baby Frank :)

So we visited Dr. Husslein last Wednesday to get our latest portrait of Baby Frank. Exciting! Sorry the portrait is kinda fuzzy, but here's how to navigate it. The head is at the bottom in the center-rightish area. As you curve around up and to the left, you see the lit up spine. That's really amazing. In another shot we have you can see each individual vertebrae. As you curve up more you get to the butt, then around is the upper leg, and then the shin bone is pointing straight up. I guess it's the left side? Yeah. Another fun fact: Dr. Husslein says that every baby always has something that grows faster so it's bigger through development than other parts. He likes to watch what will be bigger in each baby, and in Baby Frank, the FEET are big! He lauged about it on Wednesday, and told me that this will even out with the rest of the growth by April 1st. Maybe Baby Frank is destined to be a soccer player with fancy footwork? Hope so!

Anne & Sophie

Anne & Sophie on the observation deck at the Donauturm. Sophie was born in Austria, but her mom is Austrian and her dad is Egyptian. He is a missionary full time, and travels to Arabic speaking countries to spread the Gospel. It's a cool thing. Sophie's mom is pregnant with their fifth child, and is due a month before me. Sophie is the oldest of four girls right now. Wow, that's a houseful! Funny story...Sophie asked me to explain sex to her a while ago. She had read some article about it in a church magazine and was wondering why a man might want to force this girl to have sex if he didn't want a baby. It was a really interesting conversation, to say the LEAST. Wow. Fourth graders really think!

Girls:)

These are some third and fourth grade girls on the observation deck of the Donauturm. They were freezing, but they had fun!

Donauturm field trip

My class visited this tower, the Donauturm, yesterday on a field trip. We rode the lift 150 meters to the observation deck and observed a lot of Vienna and the surrounding areas. This tower is just next to the Donau, or the Danube River, that runs through Vienna. The Austrian government requires that all children in school in Austria learn about Austrian history, culture, geography, etc., so we have a special teacher for this each Monday. Her name is Brigitte Condell, and she and her husband actually went to the U2 concert with Chris this past summer. She's Austrian and her husband is Irish. They're great people, and she is completely a volunteer at our school. No money. No support. Just giving. That's it. Oh yeah, there's a revolving restaurant on the top of the tower, and they have a special deal going on now so Chris and I made reservations for Christmas time. Fun!

16 Week Baby Facts

Well...I've been searching on babycenter.com over the past few days, and I've learned a few interesting things about our 16 week old baby.
1. He or she can hear sound now, not just vibrations, since the ears are close to fully developed, so Chris is prepping the iPod with Crispy's hits so the baby can learn early about U2, Lenny Kravitz, Ben Folds, and other of dad's favorite bands.
2. He or she is 4.5 inches long and weighs about 3.5 ounces. Imagine an avocado in my stomach.
3. His or her heart is pumping about 25 quarts of blood each day, and that's suppose to increase to 190 by month 9!
4. Toe nails are starting to form this week.
I think that's about it for now. I've really loved babycenter.com because they email me and say, "Hi, Anne, you're 16 weeks pregnant. Here are some things you should know this week." Then it is really great to find out about everything from clothes to healthy snacks to birthing videos. I'm not so anxious about those videos, yet:).
We're going to the doctor on Wednesday, so stay tuned for more information about Baby Frank!

Pulling Out My Hair

Not literally. I feel like it some days, though. Uggh. My student teacher has officially taken over my classroom this week, and she'll be fully in charge until November 17th. I'm stuck in this tension between being involved to advise and make sure the kids are still learning and I also need to be disconnected some so Elizabeth can have time to herself, experiment, do it her style. But it's making me crazy. I literally have 4 weeks with NOTHING to do at school. I've been getting jobs from other teachers, making games for them, laminating, or searching for information on the internet, but it's not teaching, which is why I'm here. So I'm stuck, and pulling my hair out. I'd rather be in or out. Not in between. I heard today that's a characteristic of my personality type according to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. I'm and ESFJ, and something that comes with it is an all or nothing mentality. I'm definitely that. And right now I'm not all or nothing. It stinks.

Picture of the Day

It's been a while since I've done one of these (a Picture of the Day, not a tatoo, silly). Now what you have to ask yourself is:
1. Is this considered a concealed weapon?
2. Do you feel lucky?

Well..... do ya?

Might Sound Boring to you

So, as I'm starting to get used to my new job as the business manager, I'm having a little time here and there that I can work on stuff that isn't urgent. That can be kinda fun for me. One example is that I've changed a couple forms that people use regularly. Usually a few times a day, various teachers and staff come into my office and cash a US check with me. It's a service we do for them to save some time, hassle, and money in exchanging money to Euros. They write a US check to the school and I give them Euros in cash or I transfer Euros to their Austrian bank account. Anyhow, the little form that they fill out to do this is old and confusing. I've fixed it up to make it simple and included the new school logo too. :)
Honestly, that was pretty fun for me to do. There still are another 5 or 10 forms I plan to do in time.

A little more skin than before!!

Visually Speaking

Budapest

I'm probably going there tomorrow with the volleyball team (as a coach). It's about a 3 hour drive to the international school there. But there's a chance the game will be cancelled because of injuries and some of the girls not getting visas to be able to go into Hungary. Citizens of the US have it pretty easy in most countries, but some citizens of other countries have to do a lot of work to be able to go into another country.

I'm kinda hoping I won't have to go, honestly. It'd be nice to get ahead on some projects in the office - wow that sounds so desk-jobish. Hmmm....I guess that's what I have. Speaking of, I've been thinking about working on an MBA. It'd help my with my job, give me good training for whatever in the future, and VCS would pay for it (I'm pretty sure). Seems like IU would be the natural choice - for location and since Kelley School of Business is a top business school from what I've heard. Top of what? Top of the pile of spaghetti? Top of old smokey? Top of the world?

Something like that.

Peeping Toms

So, we've had construction going on to our building for about a year. Some days it's been frustrating - like the days when they seemed to be dropping 50 pound metal bars right above our bedroom at 7am on a Saturday, or when they covered all of our windows with a thick plastic and duct tapped all the edges down. Prison-like? You decide.
Anyhow - one of the funner things about all of this is the fact that they have scaffolding around the entire building. This past week, there have been guys out there sanding the entire building (made of stone I think) and now they're doing painting preparations. The funny part is seeing guys RIGHT outside our windows. Plus we live on the 4th floor and these guys are yelling and singing in Kosovar or Macedonian or some Baltic language.

We are: low on privacy, high on entertainment.

There we go!

So, we finally got the picture to load correctly!
OK, so she's been getting a little more hungry than normal. Snacks are important, of course, but the size of the snacks are needing to be bigger. Interesting thing is, though, that as of her last doctor appointment, she hadn't gained any weight. According to the doc, it's no problem. He says don't eat for two and exercise and almost act like nothings different. He's really laid back and it helps relax us too. :)