How did you spend your evening?

As you can imagine, the first week of school is incredibly frenetic. (You might want to look that word up if you don't know it because it describes our week very well). We are so blessed and grateful for starting the school year well. We have children from around the world attending RIA. We have Swiss, American, Polish, Chinese, Indian, Italian, British, Belgian and Canadian children (I probably missed some...). All of the children are so precious to God and to the teachers at RIA - I see the commitment and love every day. The smiles and waves the children give us as they come to school each morning just makes our day! We look forward to building our relationships, both with the children and their parents throughout the year. I just have to learn all of their names... You can see just some of the flags at RIA - they represent the nations that have attended RIA present and past (we have 16 total). We are reaching and teaching the world!

Last week we also met the Oberbürgermeister of Weil am Rhein, Herr Dietz (equivalent to a mayor the US). We got our picture taken with the mayor for the newspaper - I hope to get a copy for the blog, so stay tuned. He lived in the US for a short time and speaks impeccable English. I would love to speak German as well as he speaks English. We learned how he found out about the troubles starting up a new international school in Basel and how he worked through the political process to get the school brought over to Weil am Rhein. Herr Dietz is a great person to have on your side and he actually balanced the budget.

I titled this entry "How did you spend your evening?" because it struck me last week (as I was translating the instructions on Dran-o bottle) how different our life is now... Here is how I spent one evening last week: We walked to the drug store because they have the most bath products - you don't get prescriptions at a drug store, you get them at an apotheke (pharmacy) which is always a different business than a drug store. (Oh yeah, the prescriptions are cheaper too - one of our prescriptions is 20% of what it costs in the states, but I digress...). So, I spent about 20 minutes staring at the men's deodorants section in the drug store, trying to figure out which was an anti-perspirant, didn't cost too much, etc... Delynn and I look a sight in the stores - we just stand and stare at the wall of products, slowly deciphering what they are, what they do, whether we want to eat them... It is quite comical. We then decided that we wanted to walk up the street a 1/2 block to the pizza place. We again enjoyed a nice relaxing meal, seated outside in the blue August evening, enjoying our pizzas together. Ahhhh. Don't you want to just come visit?

We also traveled to three countries this week: St. Louis, France, Basel, Switzerland and Weil am Rhein, Germany. I represented these in the pictures of Delynn in France, the bridge across the Rhein in Basel and our orchid at the apartment (the orchid bloomed this week and is just lovely don't you think?)...

We also went with several colleagues to see the local football team, SV Weil 1910, play their league rivals Wehr! We won 2-0!! Our friend Josie's husband, Jameth Shoffner, is a defender on the team.

Some of our staff family at the football game: Delynn, Kelly (Pre-school teacher) are in the back row, Aubrey (1st grade), Josie (ESL/PE), Jennifer and Cam (Middle-school) are in the front row. The second picture is Josie and Jameth after the stunning 2-nil victory!

I wish that I had hours every day to write all that we experience. I have added a new link for the Neifert's blog. Their blog - particularly the August 25th entry - are recommended to our friends. It really hit home with me as I read it.

Peace and grace.