The first topic is the most important. There are 5 grade 7 classes in Matt's year and each class is made up of about 20 students.
All of these students have to take a biblical studies class and each one had to do a project recently. Matthew chose to do a technical project where he made a 10 minute power point presentation based on a bible verse. He used Brian Doerksen's song about Canada along with a bunch of photos that we took just before we left. It made me sad to watch it :) This scan is of Matthew's final assessment, which he got a perfect mark on. He got the highest mark in year 7! For those of you who would like to take a closer look, double click on the image and it'll fill yer screen.
The school here is very challenging and has extremely high expectations for the students. Our kids have found the transition to school to be a difficult one, but I am proud of the efforts that they have put into their work. I think that Matthew is finding out new things about himself and his abilities, and that he is enjoying the challenge.
A few weeks ago Abby went to a sleepover for all of grade 5, and there was a talent show that the teachers said was mandatory. Abby and 2 girlfriends worked very hard on a comedy act and they won first prize. Unfortunately I don't have a photo but she did win a tacky gold-paper medal! The difficulty that Abby is having is that in the last few years she has been one of the top students in her class, and now she is having to work hard to get back to that position. I'm not sure what her standing is compared to the rest of the class, but Tris and I are constantly encouraging her to go a little broader, to play with her friends or go out and play a sport rather than just focus on schoolwork outside of school.
As a mom, I believe it's my perogative to let my friends and family know how well my children are doing. So please, those of you who aren't all that interested in my kids' grades, bear with me. I know that Grandmas and Grandpas and great Aunts and Aunties are reading this, so this is technically for them:) Also, I am printing off our blog so that years from now we'll have a record of our life here, at least the first year. We've used a lot of paper and ink already!
What's new in our lives? We are finding that settling takes a lot of time and money and patience! For weeks our children have been bugging us to buy a piano because they both are involved in music, and I myself would love to sit down and play a couple of times a week. Thankfully we have found a lovely friend, Henny (she's the one who has taken me to various places), who is Indonesian and also a piano teacher, so she has helped us chose and purchase an upright Yamaha (used). It is supposed to arrive tomorrow! Unfortunately, in Canada I spent hours photocopying and cutting and organizing Abby and my loose-leaf music pages, and I just realized that I left the binder in Canada. Now we give an extra big thank you to Anna and Aunt Sam for the gifts of music books to Abby and I before we left. We are so excited to be able to pull them out soon.
Tris went vehicle shopping today with Bruce Comrie. He's narrowed our choices down to 3: a Toyota Kijang, a Nissan Lavina (?) and a Hiatsu (?). Really, they look like a minivan, a station wagon and an suv respectively. There are 3 colour choices here on the island of Java as far as we've seen: gold, silver or black. There is the odd burgundy vehicle out there, but you should see the parking lots. Everything looks the same!!! We'll let you know what we order probably later in the week.
It sounds like we're doing a lot of shopping, and we are. Hopefully it'll calm down once we get the big necessities out of the way. To our kids, the piano was essential to making our house a home (in their words, too! Except for the word essential...) Once the mold in our wall/ceiling in the living room is taken care of, I'd like to paint a little and make the place a little more of our own. We're not sure of the timeline on that but we're waiting patiently.
We've been discussing things that we miss from Canada and a few things are:
the way our wooden house creaked in the night; the way the stairs made noises
the cool breeze
cinnamon gum
inexpensive red nail polish!
just knowing we can head to Cloverdale anytime we want to visit Tris' family
sushi with Aunt Sam
big strong hugs from my dad (Poppa)
mom's roast beef dinners!!!! (I have yet to see a roast here, unless you count the ones that were hanging from the hooks at the wet market)
Willie (Tris is pretty sad about having to leave him behind)
Canadian green grass...what we have here is similar to a weed that I would pull in my garden at home
leaves turning colour
There are a lot of good things here, but we just miss a few of the things from home. Obviously we have a bunch more, but if I wrote them all out, I may look like a bit of a whiner!
I guess in all fairness we should consider the things here that we are thoroughly enjoying:
Tris LOVES the heat
Tris loves his job
Matt and Abby are being thoroughly challenged in school and are facing it head-on
you can go anywhere and order fresh-squeezed juice from a variety of fruits
there are some great outlet shops here...they carry brand names of things that are "made in Indonesia" (Esprit, Gap, Old Navy, etc)
there are no spider webs in my house
I don't have to clean my toilets
the storms are incredible!
we get to learn a new language
Well, it's getting late. That took me 1/2 an hour and now I'm hoping that I can fall asleep. Thanks for having this little gab session with me...
Thanks for reading.
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