Tuesday, September 6, 2011

School starts- from Kindergarten to college:)

Today is the first day of school. Aliya started 9th grade, high school! She was up and ready to go on time this morning. A couple hours into school, she texted me (a big school no-no!) and told me, "Everything is good here!" I am happy for her that's she's having a good first day.

Her schedule was changed to only having one ELL class (she was to have 2). Her previous ELL teacher and her dean decided that she could handle more academic classes so they made the change. If it ends up to be too much for her, they will pull her back into 2 ELL periods per day. The other change came (still kicking myself!) when the original schedule came out and she was put into a lower Algebra class. She was VERY upset by this and couldn't understand why she couldn't be in a 'regular' math class. Blaine and I were completely relieved by this as this meant much less homework for her at night (read-Blaine helping her for 1-2 hours per night). I did question the dean about it and was told it must have been a mistake and since she earned a B last year in Algebra, she would be moved up to the regular Algebra class. She was absolutely thrilled because she thinks that she needs no help and should do all the work the other students are doing. She gets very offended! Oh, my goodness. She has no idea!

Misganaw had his visit to Kindergarten today. Tomorrow he starts for real. His teacher seems sweet and he cannot wait to go tomorrow on the BUS! I did see that having so many older sibs can be detrimental in terms of sharing. He was playing with the cash register in class today while I was filling out papers. From the corner I hear, "Hey, I was playing with that FIRST!" The youngest has to learn to fight for turns and that carries through to school. We will have to work on that! He did make friends with the little boy and when I walked over to them later, I saw that MJ had made a gun and was shooting the boy. I heard the boy say, "The teacher won't like that you made a gun." Oh, boy. Just how much trouble will my little boy get into this year?

So our youngest is a Kindergartner and our oldest is beginning his senior year in college. How fun is that?????

We now have under 6 weeks until we go to Ethiopia. Denise and I are getting a kick out of the reaction we get when people hear what we are doing. What we've found is that the huge majority of people who hear that we're going to Ethiopia do NOT want to talk about it at all. They don't ask any questions like, "what will you be doing?" or "how did you get involved in that?" They look away, change the subject or just ignore it all together. Why is this? I really have no idea!

I had one lady at football practice who was very friendly and chatty tell me that she thinks the boys play in the Metrodome for their last game. I asked her when that was. I mean, how cool would it be to play where the Vikings play? She told me it was in October while we are gone and I said, "SHOOT!" She asked if we were gone and I simply replied that it was our 25th anniversary and we were going to do some humanitarian work in Ethiopia.

She looked away and a few minutes after a long silence she said, "You've been married 25 years?"

"Yep."

"So you're going to Ethiopia?"

"Yes."

More silence.

The end.

This is the MOST conversation I've ever had when a stranger hears we are going to Ethiopia.

Anyone have any idea why this would be? If someone told me they were going to an unusual place like that, I'd have a million questions. Maybe I'm just nosey!!

Blessings,
Laura

2 comments:

  1. I was also so puzzled by this. I spent time in South Africa, Russia & India and there was the same response. Nothing, no questions...closed door. I remember my very small minded Grandma giving me a hard time about such foolishness as third world work. I think it makes them open their minds to something they want to ignore. Pain & poverty is not their problem so they would rather not hear about it. That's my guess.
    Nancy K.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Laura,

    Not only do I find that so strange, but it makes me wish I would run into you so I could ask you a million questions about your trip. So, what WILL you all get to do while you're there?!

    So exciting!!

    ReplyDelete