Snow... sleet... rain... elves... Spain

The weather here in Estonia is just crazy! In the morning when I woke up at 6.19 am, I was pleasantly surprised as it was snowing and everything was white.

Karel (my little one) was really happy to see the snow. He found a small chocolate bar from the slipper he had placed on the windowsill for elves to visit.
While eating the chocolate, he said, "You see, elves made it for me."
"How did they make it?" I asked.
"With their little tools," he claimed :D

The view from our balcony this morning :)

It was really nice to walk to school, I could almost feel Christmas approaching. I had no idea that it would sleet and rain soon and by 5 pm most of the snow would be gone. So now we have streams and ponds instead of roads here :P

The view from my classroom at 11.30 am.

I taught seven classes in a row today. During the 8th class we decorated the Christmas tree in the auditorium and some of the high school students practiced ballroom dances as we have Christmas prom on 21st December. To make things more interesting we're going to have a dance competition between teachers and we will have to dance with last year students. I'm dancing with one of my students and we're going to dance jive :P

The Christmas the students decorated. For some reason we have a pretty small tree this year. But I loved the way the tree smelled :) (I have trouble choosing between American and British spelling here).

Finally, here's a photo of my class. My classroom was really crowded because we had two groups together and my students were talking about their trip to Basque Country.

I'm also going to share a video with you. It shows the trip from the students' point of view and it was made by Nils - one of the students who went to Spain with us. I hope he doesn't mind I'm sharing his video :) Here's the link.

Another sunrise

Greetings from Jüri. It's getting colder and colder here. Last night it was -5 degrees and this morning when I went to work everything was frozen.

A frozen car in our street. That's why I walk to work every day - getting rid of all the ice would take at least 10 minutes and walking to school takes exactly the same amount of time.

One of the reasons why I like my classroom is the fact that every morning I can see the sunrise. That's the sunrise we had today. I took the picture at 8.20 am. It was really beautiful to see all the pink, purple and yellow shades of color. Unfortunately, the sun disappeared into clouds ten minutes later.

I still miss my other reality... a lot.

Back in everyday routine

Life is all the same in Jüri. I have to go to work again and on Monday everybody was really happy to see me again. They all asked if I could still speak Estonian. I have taken a couple of photos with my phone during the past few days to share bits and pieces of my world with you.

 That's the house where I live. The picture was taken yesterday when I was walking to work in the morning. Every day my first class starts at 8.05 am so I usually get up at 6.37. This year I have 28 classes a week and I'm also responsible for a group of 12th-graders. But I'm really lucky because there are three days in a week when my last classes finish already at 2 pm. Which does not mean that I can go home then... but I don't really have to explain this to teachers. You know too well how much time planning and marking the papers takes.

 That's my school. You can actually see just a part of the school and the library as I don't use the main entrance in the mornings. I walk to school with my son who's in the 2nd grade. It's really funny how he sometimes holds my hand and every time he sees someone from his class he always lets go. I always smile and ask him if he grew up all of a sudden.

 That's my classroom. I've had the same room (328) for six years already. I got it after the school was renovated. When I went to work on Monday the room seemed to be really small. And maybe it is a bit small because I usually have 12-21 students in my English classes and there are many active learning methods I could never try out in this small room.

That's the main entrance of the school. It gets dark very early here. I think today it was already dark at 4 pm.

These are my boys. I took the photo today at the kindergarten.

That's the reality I'm living in now... the reality I lived in before Boone. The only thing that has changed a lot is me.

That's it for today. I have to go and read some bedtime stories now. I miss you...