Croatia!!

Ok, so I may be a week late in posting about my weekend getaway to Croatia, but to be fair, a lot has happened since them. Let me explain.

Last Friday, Shelby, Danko, Jackie, Christina and I were supposed to be driving to Croatia. The car we were renting was going to be delivered to the school between 14:30 and 15:00. Well, at 14:00, Danko received a text message saying "I am sorry, I no longer have a car for you. The previous renter crashed it." How depressing! We all thought that our road trip was being cancelled. Not to be outsmarted by a car rental guy, however, Danko had other rent-a-car places bookmarked on his computer. We went to check them out and, twenty minutes later, had reserved another car. The only problem with this one was that we had to pick it up at the airport. No biggie. The girls were working for at least another half hour, so Danko and I figured we would trek down there ourselves, drive back to school with the car, pick up the girls and be on the road by 16:00 max. False.

The airport is three buses away. We got on and off the first one without a hitch. Same for the second one. The problems began when we got off the third bus. Thinking we had passed our stop from lack of attention, we ended up getting off the bus three stops early. Seeing as the next bus wasn't coming for another 25 minutes, we decided to just walk... how far could three stops really be? The answer, it turns out, is freakin' far. A forty-five minute walk brought us to the stop we were actually supposed to get off at. We continued walking, now looking for the rental place. There really wasn't anything in sight, so we stopped at a garage to ask for directions. We figured the guy in there must know where it was, since we were supposedly on the right street. Well, he did not know. He did, however, put me on the phone with someone who spoke English and could direct me. With our newfound directions, we headed back up the street. Well, the directions were wrong. We absolutely were not at the right place.

Finally, Danko decided to call the car rental place and just ask them. They said "Get back on the bus and go one stop." Back to the bus stop we went. We missed the bus by 3 minutes so, for just one stop, we decided to walk... again. We walked another 20 minutes to reach the next stop, which was in the middle of nowhere. As we were walking, Danko's phone rang. It was the car people, asking where we were. When he told them, they freaked out, saying that that was still the wrong stop and that they were actually in the airport! We were really starting to get annoyed now, but we hopped back on the bus and, this time, ended up at the right place. We got our car, picked up the girls, and were on the road to Croatia (through the back roads of Hungary and Slovenia) by 19:00. Only five hours behind schedule.

When we finally arrived in Varaždin it was midnight. We met Danko's grandmother and a few of his friends (all drunk - except Granny), then went straight to sleep. The next day, we went exploring. Varaždin is a pretty small town, but it's really cute (hence all the photos of random streets I put up on Facebook). We visited the castle, which used to have a moat (!), went to a couple little coffee shops, attempted to buy oranges at a market (without our trusty translator - Danko), and basically just wandered the streets for the entire day.



That night, we went out to celebrate Danko's birthday. Apparently, it is a Croatian tradition (or perhaps only amongst Danko and his friends...) to pre-drink in the park. And what is the drink of choice, you ask? Wine and coke, of course. It's awful. Anyway, we drank there for a while (watering the grass a few times, I must admit) then proceeded to hit up pretty much every bar in the city. We drank, we danced, we sang, and we finally got home at 5:00 in the morning. The next day, Granny made us lunch (yummy!!!), we packed up the car, and we headed back to Bratislava. Overall, you might think finding the car was the most exciting part of the weekend, but Croatia was exactly what we needed. A wonderful weekend relaxing with friends. We are all counting down the days until we can do it again!

On Monday, unfortunately, it was back to school time. I am really learning to dread Mondays here. It's like they're cursed... there's always something going wrong. On this specific Monday, the first grade teacher did not show up for work. Catherine, the vice-principal, asked me if I would cover her class for the day, since mine is basically the only class with two teachers in it. I did it. By the end of the day, it became apparent that the grade one teacher had quit and they needed to find a replacement. Who did they ask to cover until they can find someone? Me. DAMN! I do not know anything about grade one. Nor do I want to give up all my painting, colouring, and play-doh time! Right now, it looks like I will be there for at least another two weeks. Hopefully they will find someone soon... I am very afraid to screw these kids over and never teach them to read anything at all!!

Next weekend, Shelby, Danko, and I are going to Stockholm for the long weekend!! We are starting to get really excited about it, even though we really don't know anything about the place. Hopefully, by the time we get back, I will have loads of stories to tell about meatballs, IKEA, and awesome accents!

Dovidenia!!

Steph :)

All true, I swear.

Ok, so seven weeks into kindergarten, and I feel confident in stating that I have seen and heard some of the funniest/most shocking things of all time from the 4 year-olds at Forel International School.

First, let me tell you the tale of Bibi (that's her name, no kidding). Bibi is a 3 year-old who is spoiled rotten... and I do mean rotten. Thankfully, Bibi is not in my class (I have the older kids - the 4 year old geezers), because when she doesn't get exactly what she wants exactly when she wants it, Bibi starts wailing. One of the things Bibi generally wants is to not nap. So, she usually gets kicked out of the napping room and thrown into my room, where we are resting quietly. As she walks in, I always tell her, "Bibi, if you are going to be in this room, you have to be quiet and you have to put your clothes on" (because they sleep in pyjamas and, apparently, she only ever starts wailing after she has changed). Well, Bibi does not like that. Usually, all she has to do is pout at her mom and she will have a slave to change her. I am not about to start dressing her everyday, so I just make her sit alone until she sees fit to get dressed. Generally, she sits around sobbing for 10 or 15 minutes, realizes I'm not coming over there, and shuts the hell up while she gets dressed. Last week, she changed her pattern. Here's how it went:

1) Bibi walks in as children are playing.

2) Steph tells Bibi that she can play once she is dressed.

3) Bibi wails.

4) Steph tells Bibi to be quiet and to change.

5) Bibi pouts, removes all her clothes (all of them).

6) Bibi goes to play, butt naked.

7) Steph tells Bibi that changing actually involves putting on new clothes, and not simply removing one's pyjamas.

8) Bibi wails.

9) Bibi sits on the carpet, still naked, and proceeds to rub her hooha all over it.

10) Steph tells Bibi to stop, stifling giggles.

11) Bibi pouts, then crosses her legs pretzel-style, further exposing herself to the world.

12) Steph lays out Bibi's clothes because she really doesn't need to see this, but still refuses to give in to a 3 year-olds pressure tactics.

13) Bibi wails.

14) Bibi sticks her fingers in nature's pocket for no apparent reason, the goes to play again.

15) Steph drags Bibi back to her clothes and forces her to get dressed.

16) Bibi wails, but ultimately loses the battle and gets dressed.

17) Steph disinfects any and all toys Bibi may have touched after #14.

It was a good day.

While this whole Bibi incident may be somewhat shocking and disturbing, I also get my fair share of hilarity. Take today, for example. For the past 3 or 4 weeks, we have been telling kids that they are not allowed to bring in toys from home. We have also been e-mailing this rule to their parents. We are failing. The kids continue to bring in their toys, so we simply make them leave them in their lockers, in hopes that one day they will realize that it is, in fact, pointless to bring them to school when they cannot even play with them. Today, as usual, Marco brought his toy car to school. I told him to leave it in his locker, and he did. Then, after snack, he thought he'd try to sneak it back into the room. He waltzed right by me with a huge toy car in his hand. So, I said "Marco, we don't play with toys from home at school. Please go put it in your locker." He looked at me, stomped his foot, and said "No!" Before I even got the chance to say anything, Ninka, a super-cute little girl with no front teeth except her canines (i.e. vampire teeth) looks at him and says, very sternly, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, TIME OUT!" She then turns to me (I am now officially cracking up and trying to hide my smile behind my hand) and says matter-of-factly "Marco is time out." All I could do was shake my head "No". I literally could not speak. Apparently, her counting worked on Marco, though, because he turned around and put it away.

Now, I'm going to assume that most of you don't think that last story is that funny, because odds are she was just copying something she had heard me say in the past, right? Wrong! I have never ever used the words Time Out in my class. I HATE the words Time Out. She just blurted them out, out of the blue. It was brilliant, and if you can't see that, well it sucks to be you!

Other than that, I have many children who drop their pants in the middle of the playground just for fun, my whole class thinks it's Friday everyday except Friday (then, they think it's Monday - I think they are taunting me), and I am becoming fluent in Slovak commands because this is all they understand.

My life outside of school continues to be relatively boring. I come home after school and am to tired to make the trek from my place to anywhere (it's pretty remote!) and on weekends I usually hang out with friends from work doing ever-so-exciting things such as making play-doh, doing groceries, or watching movies (we saw The Expendables... I promise I didn't know what it was about when I agreed and I absolutely did not enjoy it). This coming weekend, however, I will add a little spice to my life when 4 friends and I rent a car and drive to Croatia!!! Danko has friends and family down there, so we are tagging along with him... he will show us around, his grandmother will feed us some Croatian food, then we will party it up Croatian-style for Christina and Danko's birthdays which happen to be the following week. It should be awesome, so maybe I'll have something wild to write on here when I get back.

Dovidenia!

Steph :)