I just got back from a Principal – Parent Coffee session. Every month I meet with parents. It is nice to get a chance to hear from them.
It was surprisingly warm today. We woke up and it was raining, but the day turned out to be quite nice. Serbia moved their clocks back this weekend and we really notice the time change. It gets dark before 5:00 PM which much different for us. I took this photo of Nadia and Oliver yesterday on the way to school. Nadia was looking particularly beautiful that morning.
I really enjoyed participating in yesterday’s workshop. Katie Moore from the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Los Angeles, California came to give our teachers a workshop on how to implement their Deliberating in a Democracy initiative. This program aims to improve the teaching and learning of democratic principals and skills of civic deliberation. The program is funded by the US Department of Education and works in schools in eastern Europe and the USA.
I learned the difference among deliberation, debate, and discussion. Deliberation is listening to other viewpoints and opinions carefully and then for a person to make his/her own decision. Debate is trying to convince the other side and discussion is talking about an issue but not making a decision. Katie led us through a sample lesson and we deliberated the question, “Should our democracy permit hate speech?” which comes under the topic of Freedom of Expression.
I particularly liked two parts of the lesson procedures. The first is it forces students to first use their heads and concentrate on the facts and readings and not go directly to their emotions on controversial issues. Deliberation is about controlled controversy, and almost all of the topics are controversial. The other aspect is each side needs to “teach back” to the other side what they learned from listening to the other side’s arguments. The rules for deliberation also help young people control their emotions when involved in these discussions.
Katie has been to Serbia many times and they have a page on the Deliberation in a Democracy web site. I would like to thank her for including ISB in her visit and for the teachers who enthusiastically participated in the workshop. This will definitely benefit our students.
The past couple of days Ocean has been walking more and more. The video above is from Sunday evening, as she is shown walking in our living room from me to Nadia. Last night (Monday) she was walking even more, so it is inevitable that she will soon leave crawling. She is just about 13 months and it is a bit late to walk She is developed in other areas however. Her speech and understanding of daily events is amazing. Ocean mimics much of what we do and say. She will be a smart cookie!
Below is a photo of one of Ocean’s favorite hobbies. Playing in the toilet! She also loves to go into rubbish bins and take everything out. Even though she is in her “destructo” mode, she is so cute that it is impossible to be mad at her.
Ocean Having Fun
It is also nice to see that the US dollar is finally rising against other currencies. When we arrived in Belgrade in July, the exchange rate was 1 dollar = 50 dinars, and now it is up to almost 70 dinars.
Owen is shown above with his passport ready to re-enter Serbia. Owen was the ball boy of the girls’ MS soccer team. He faithfully attended practtices and really helped me out by retrieving balls, cones, among other duties. It was really nice to spend time with him alone. He loved the swimming pool at the hotel so that is about all I saw of Sofia besides the school. We were not in Bulgaria for much time, but I have a few impressions. It was surprising that Bulgaria seemed a bit less developed than Serbia, despite the fact that Bulgaria is part of the EU and Serbia is not. There was a lot of construction on the “ring road” going around the city and the school is located on the outskirts. It was a beautiful, new school situated on the base of the mountains surrounding Sofia. The Bulgarians were defintiely different from the Serbs, as they looked more Turkish, Armenian, than Slavic. Owen was a good boy during the trip! We drove over on Friday and came back the next day. It was also great to win the game on Saturday and have the girls play so well during the weekend.
On Sunday, Oliver and I attended the Belgrade Book Fair. The Serbs are readers and the convention center was packed with people buying books. This was the last day of the seven day fair and I was impressed with the number of book stores and readers buying books. There must have been close to 5000 people in the convention hall. My only complaint was the cost of books. The two books I wanted to get, very few in English, cost 7,000 dinars and 5,000 dinars. That is over $100 each. I did by a biography of Tito for $18. From the Blic web site, the director of the book fair gave these statistics:
About 135,000 tickets were sold, while 4,800 people worked on stands on daily basis. There were 1,180 accredited journalists, which is, according to Trpkovic, the greatest number so far. About 4,000 invitations and 2,000 tickets were handed over, so altogether 147,000 people visited this year’s Book Fair. The greatest number of tickets (31,500) was sold on Saturday.
We hosted Janna’s and Abby’s birthday party at our house. Paul, Abby’s father and our IT person at the school, worked the BBQ. We have a beautiful stone oven in our yard. We had a really nice time. Once again, the tempation to use Alkohol, created a fire again. Alkohol is a flammable spirit that is used here to begin fires. Think of a super-charged lighter fluid. Paul threw some on the coals to get the new ones going, and the result was a massive flame shooting up through the chimney and catching the vines covering the opening on fire. Paul acted quickly however, and put out the fire with our garden hose.
We had a great trip to Sofia, Bulgaria this weekend. It was my first CEESA sporting event. The Middle School boys’ and girls’ soccer teams traveled the 7 hours to visit the Anglo American School of Bulgaria. We played two games, one on Friday afternoon and the second on Saturday morning before heading back home to Belgrade.
The girls arrived in Belgrade moments before the game. After a long bus ride due to traffic on the “Ring Road” in Sofia, the girls were a bit lethargic. Yasemin however, scored the first goal of the game within seconds of the kick off. AAS then proceeded to reel off 5 unanswered goals. ISB played much better in the second half after some adjustments were made. Striker Natasa scored a goal and we ended up tieing the second half, 1-1. That was a portend of things to come.
The players then went with the host families and spent the night in Sofia. They made some good friends and saw a different way of life. That is a big part of the CEESA sport exchanges.
On Saturday morning the ISB Dragons were hungry for revenge. The combination of Yasemin as sweeper and Natasa as striker paid off as they combined for four goals. Johanna was incredible in goal making numerous stops, allowing only one goal. ISB won the game 4-1 and evened the goal differential between the two games at 6 goals apiece. A fitting end for two well played games.
All the girls showed improvement during the season. The dedication to practice and games really showed. Standouts on defense were Ana Maria and Natasha. They continually frustrated AAS by clearing the ball out of bounds. Midfielders Tamar, Charlotte, and Vanessa, although being small physically, were big in performance and really played well. ISB played both games without substitutes and a much younger team than AAS. They are to be congratulated for their fitness and teamwork.
Most Valuable Player (Girl of the Match) Yasemin G. clears the ball.
I would like to thank the parents of the players, Coach Jamie Van Drunen, Athletic Director Will Clowney, and AAS Athletic Director Murray Te Huti for their efforts in making the season and the trip a big success!!!
Oliver is showing off his two stitches. Yesterday he fell going up the steps in school. When I got over to the Lower School, he was on the bus with a crying mother, the school nurse, and our head of security. We headed down to Bel Medic. Oliver has a half circle shaped deep gash on the bridge of his nose.
At the clinic, the doctor sewed up the cut without local anesthetic. I thought the doctor was going to do it, but he just started stitching. Oliver was a tough little guy. They have a tendency in former communist Serbia not to use anesthetic. It hurt both Nadia and I to watch him go through that. He was wailing, but he stayed still. He went home after, took a nap, and then later that night was up again and playing soccer in the yard.
He was doing fine today and went to school. I guess Oliver learned from his Uncle Andy
It was an absolutely glorious day today! A bright sun had temperatures up in the high 70’s. Nadia and I took advantage of this and the fact we had the nanny with the kids and went for a run. Nadia is shown above running up Košutnjak Hill. It is a big wooded area behind our suburb of Senjak. She made it up to the top. We ran all the way through and back to town along the railway. It is one of my favorite runs I have in Belgrade.
In the afternoon I took my bike down to the shop to get a new tire and took the boys out for a long ride at Ada Ciganlija. Owen and Ollie both are tough little guys and rode for a long time today. All in all, a glorious day. I always say that any day I spend more time outdoors than indoors is a good day. The boys went straight to be tonight as they were good and tired.
We had a nice fall break that came at the perfect time. We just finished the first quarter and we needed the downtime to refresh ourselves. We didn’t leave Belgrade, but slept in, played a lot with the kids, and took care of some things around the house. We got Nadia’s treadmill set up and also made an offer on a car. More details on that coming up next week.
Well, it is back to school tomorrow. I am looking forward to taking the girls’ soccer team to Bulgaria this weekend.
It is really nice to already have learned another language besides my native language. I am finding Serbian to be easier than Spanish. When I learned Spanish starting back in 1992, I had no idea what it meant to “conjugate” or “inflect” a verb. That is because in English, the verb basically stays the same. For example in English, the verb “to run” is – I run, you run, she runs, we run, they run, you (formal) run. Run is run no matter who is running.
Not so In Spanish and now once again in Serbian, the verb ending changes.
For example, the verb imati which means “to have”” is conjugated like this:
I (ja) imam
you (ti) imate
he (on) ima
we (mi) imamo
they (oni) imaju
That is not too bad. The most frequently used verbs like biti (to be), hteti (to want), moći (to be able, can) have irregular forms, but the rest are pretty straight forward. I can remember that the “I” is usually ends with “m”, the you with “š” which sounds like “sh”, we is “mo” and he/she/it and formal you with a vowel “a” or “e”.Now it is just a question of learning more infinitives. Of course it does not get into the future or past tense. Hopefully Serbian will not have two different past tenses like Spanish.
It was another great family weekend for us. We continue to enjoy the 5-day fall break from school. We are staying in Belgrade and not traveling anywhere. Without a car yet, it is tough to travel with young children.
The video above was filmed on the Vase Pelagica, a street near our house. There is an apartment building with a small ledge the is irresistible for the boys. We often walk by there on the way to the taxi stand.
Yesterday I went for a long run with Ocean to the Kalemegdan fort. In the afternoon, we went to the Dacho Restaurant for a great traditional Serbian meal. I also cut the grass in the late afternoon and we put the kids to bed.
Yesterday was the first day of holiday and what a glorious day it was. The photo above was from Tuesday when we had dinner in our back yard. If you can believe it, I did not take a single photo yesterday!
It was nice because our nanny came. The weather was cool and gray. Nadia and I went for a run together in the morning while Vera stayed with the kids. We then went to Home Center to buy some household things like a sandwich maker and coffee machine. Later I actually took a nap!!! and then we hung out with the children. Nadia made a delicious pumpkin soup. After putting the kids to sleep, we watched a The Dark Knight, the latest batman film. I must be getting old because I really don’t enjoy watching movies anymore. There are very few movies that I think are worth my time to watch. Most of what produced is silly and a waste of time. It was a pirated version and the movie was a bit interesting to see one of Heath Ledger’s final performances.
Our children are so precious and cute! Tucking them into bed is such a privilege. Author Milan Kundera once wrote about people re-living their experiences an infinite number of times. I will probably wish I could go back to these times when the kids are grown. It is so funny to see their blond heads running around the house. Ocean is very demanding and on the verge of walking. She lets us know exactly what she wants loud and clear!
We continue to have 4 more days of holiday. It is great to refresh the soul and reconnect with each other and our children.
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