First year of only one kid in the shot. After years of taking pictures with his sister, Breck shines on his own in Poland
Update! It was great of Alea to send us one from Montana too!
Our time in Jakarta is drawing to a close, and what better way to celebrate than with a 70’s party?! The drinks flowed, the disco hustled, and – of course – the clothes got swapped.
Alea finishes up her years at JIS with a beautiful evening of pomp!
Well, today is the day.
After 12 years, Breck and Alea drove with me to school this morning for the last time. Alea graduates on Saturday, leaves on Monday for the US, and enrolls at Montana State University in the fall. Breck, Susan, and I are in Jakarta for another 2 weeks before summer vacation in Minnesota/Montana and then a move to Warsaw. Life as we’ve known it is being shaken up.
As is our tradition, the kids took a picture together before heading off. It is certainly a bittersweet moment, as it is the final one of them together at the end of a school year. In the next post down, I’ve compiled all the pictures from when they started together in Belgrade, oh so many years ago.
We’ve had a tradition of taking a “first day of school” and “last day of school” picture of the kids through the years, and it has been really fun to watch them grow up. Here are the shots, taken in Serbia, the US, India, and Indonesia over the past 12 years:
Great Fourplay party this afternoon, with super food and drink, slippery floors, and even the muff bag! Our group has had a few members move on over the years, but also gained a few babies, so all is good.
Alea and I spent yesterday afternoon exploring the JIS campus and taking some pictures. We wanted something that could go in her graduation announcement, and had fun checking out some different places and poses.
Here are some of the pictures that will NOT be in her grad announcement – that one will be a surprise. There are just pictures that I like…
Our school takes a week without walls-type trip every year, and so we headed out to Indonesia’s cultural center with 200 6th graders. We got to visit ancient temples, go white-water rafting, view traditional dances, and just do all sorts of fun stuff to wrap up the school year (and our time in Indonesia).
Our teams traveled to Vietnam to take part in the regional Mathcounts competition last weekend. Since I started the program at JIS and pushed for an interscholastic tournament, check out the phenomenal growth:
I’d say we’ve gotten things pretty well off the ground!
Getting my geek on this weekend: My teaching partner and I are presenting at a Google Summit being held here. Name of our session? Forms As Reflective Tools. We have so much fun with acronyms!
Spent the day collaborating with local teachers, helping out with a workshop about “Applications of Mathematics in the real world.” Susan set up a whole series of activities revolving around math problem solving strategies, and I was able to lead a couple of small group sessions on gathering data and displaying/interpreting graphs.
Lots of smiles all around, and a reminder to myself that A) Susan and I are really are a pretty awesome team together and B) living around the world affords us some astoundingly unique life opportunities.
Cool class happening today: gave an assignment that kids had to present to their parents. One of them and his mom got on Skype to show it and get feedback from dad – who’s stationed in Afghanistan. Kind of a neat little thing…
Mathcounts in Singapore got off to a bit of a rough start, as one of our students was turned away at the airport due to visa issues, then we had a flight cancellation, and finally a broken bus, the team finally made it and was raring to go. Late night studying and quick trips to Subway were all the rage for our kids.
Here’s the team in all their glory after today’s competition. Mathcounts can get rough…