School Library

Last Thursday Cara and I finally finished getting the library at our school set up and ready for the open house on Saturday!! It has taken us a while, and been a lot of work but it looks great! Unfortunately we still have lots more work to do. The school has a ton of Oxford Reading Tree books, which are for the teachers to use for guided reading or leveled books. They are not part of the library collection and will be on the opposite end of the room from the library books. For the open house though we moved them around and used some to fill up shelves. This was all so that it looked nice, and now we will have to move things back. Then we get to start cataloging books so that the students can take them out. For now classes can come and use the library but no books can be taken out. Here is how the room looked when we were done, before any kids came in and messed the books up!

As you can see we have a large room and not that many books. Some of the books are actually borrowed from a teacher in order to fill the shelves! At the open house we had people commenting on the lack of books in such a large room... But as the library grows I think the space will not be enough. The school will someday be from reception to grade 12, and we will want to keep space for tables, room for kids to read and hopefully even classes to be in the library to work or listen to stories. For now though, I am excited to start having classes use the library (as long as they put the books back in the right places!). 

The open house was yesterday. Yes we had to work on a Saturday. For me it wasn't too big a deal. I was in the library the whole time and didn't get too many parents asking questions. Most of the questions were if the library was open yet (no), if the kids could take out books (not yet) and when they would get to come to the library (with their class).

After the open house 9 of us headed over to the little park for a game of football (ie. soccer). I joined in this time and had a great time. I was super tired after though - almost 2 hours of running around! I am not great at football, partly due to a lack of experience, but that didn't really matter. A lot of the other teachers are super good, so hopefully that will rub off on me :) It would be useful, because (a) football is so popular here, there are always kids playing at break and in hort, and (b) I happen to be a sports teacher...

As we were heading to the park two of the admin/head people said they would pick us up some pizzas and meet us there. This was great because the open house was 11-2 (well more like 2:30...) and we hadn't eaten lunch. By about 4 we decided they must have been joking as they hadn't shown up. At about 5 we finished playing and some of the people driving back to the city headed off. And then returned... with the two people bringing pizza! Apparently they had gotten lost in the corn fields and had been walking around for about an hour with 5 pizzas. They must have looked pretty funny. They were dressed up as if going to a wedding, she was carrying 5 pizzas and walking in heels and he was wearing a suit and pulling a briefcase... through corn fields! So we stayed and ate an early pizza dinner :)

Later in the evening I dragged myself out of the house and into Frankfurt. I met up with 3 other teachers for some drinks and to watch some karaoke. Yesterday was a beautiful day - sunny and warm as if we've gone back to summer! The evening was also nice and we sat outside. We did go watch some karaoke, but it was late by that time and the first couple songs were German so I ended up heading home. I was super tired after a long week and a long day. 

This morning, feeling a lot less tired, I decided to take my bike out. I have explored the forest on foot, but not much on my bike. So I rode around for a couple hours trying to get a sense of where the different paths went. I went one way, along the edge of the forest and discovered:

Cows! I actually had to go back to take the picture at the end, because I had expected to go and come back on that path, but ended up doing a loop. Well actually a couple of them. Right after this I headed back into the forest to the right, and up a hill... I had never been this way so I was just randomly deciding where to go. But then I found myself out by the highway I walked to (a different way) a few weekends ago. I decided then to follow a loop that had posted signs. After going down a large hill I found myself at the top of the path near my house, where I'd turned off to the cows. Instead of going home though I kept following the signs. After a while of riding along the fields I lost the signs, and ended up in Oberursal:

 I followed some other signs, and again randomly ended up back where I had been, on the path back to my house. So I headed back, with one detour to the cows, for some lunch. Maybe another time I will try to follow the signs, starting in the other direction, and actually make it around the loop!

For now I am going to relax for the rest of the afternoon. Do some house cleaning, laundry, baking and hopefully book some tickets for Christie and I to go to Italy at Christmas.