Week 3

The week is finally over. Although I am having so much fun I'm happy I can now just relax and don't have so much noise around me. Anyway here is an overview of what I did this week:

Monday
After being at home for a few days I felt ready to go back to work. It was quite boring to just stay put and not doing so much. I had told Beate that I would come in again today but a bit later so I could catch some more sleep. I also had to go by bus since my bike was still at the school. I arrived around 10.30 and the children were very happy to see me again. The staff members also asked me how I was whenever I saw them throughout the week. We made some bread with the children, I did some cleaning and tried to calm down the new girl (we now have 14 children in total) who was away from her mother for the first time. Since she could only speak and understand Italian it was quite hard. Her noise and the fact I was still recovering made me leave early (at 13.00). Beate and I agreed on me coming in at 10.00 tomorrow.

Tuesday
When I woke up I felt horrible. I hadn't slept so much and I got a cold so I decided it was a better idea to stay put for a day. I send a sms to Beate to let her know I wasn't coming.
I used this day to email a couple of secondary schools to ask if I could visit their school (one of the assignments that I have to do). So far one school community has emailed me back that it went to the headmasters of the different schools within their community. I really hope they will allow me to visit their school.
I also started working out a bit, doing sit-ups and squats. I hope I can keep this up...

Wednesday
Today I felt better again and I did start at 10.00. It was a day filled with apples. Cutting a lot of apples in tiny bits for apple crumble, stewed apple and apple sauce. All the apples were from the apple tree I bumped my head against. While I was working some of the kids came up to me and really wanted to help, so we cut the apples together. I found it so sweet that they choose to help me instead of playing. I had enough energy to stay till 15.00 and that was it. Nothing really interesting happened. Well maybe the fact that I saw two squirrels playing when I was cycling home.

Thursday
I decided to start at 8.30 to see if I could do a full day again, and it worked out. This time I could actually see what a Thursday looked like in the Elderflower Kindergarten. As always we started outside again, but slightly shorter today because they would also have eurhythmics (another word learned) today. We also did some drawing with crayons and it was so amazing to see what the children made up and how lovely and big their imagination is. Also during play time the children make up fantastic stories and it puts a smile on my face to see these children have fun and smile at you. Just before lunch the mother of one of the girls came to visit us and tell us about the Jewish new year. We learned a couple of Hebrew words and a song. After lunch (which was delicious as it always has been so far) I just sat at a table and cut the corners, literally. I got a couple of white papers and Beate asked me to cut the corners of so they were slightly rounded. At the end of the day Beate invited me to come her place somewhere in the near future. A girl from Sweden will visit her and she thought it would be nice, for both of us, to meet up and do something fun.

Friday
Since Elderflower goes to the woods on Friday's and they really don't need my help there I asked David (the class 5 teacher) on Thursday if I maybe could help him. He said he didn't really need my help but I was welcome to join him and observe and that is what I did. In the beginning the children (ten in total) were a bit shy towards me but later on in the day they talked with me during breaks about all kinds of stuff. It was a very interesting day and I really enjoyed it. One thing I constantly had to remind myself was that the children were 10 and that their class 5 is around class 7 in the Netherlands. Sometimes I thought 'Wow are they already learning this' and then I remembered again. One of the things that really fascinates me is that their is so much room for creativity. They write stories, draw and paint, sing songs, play games, have plays. The children even enjoyed cleaning the classroom. I never saw a boy being so happy about the fact that he was the one who was appointed to clean the windows. Oh and as a project they are building a round house together in the part of the garden where the primary school plays. During the breaks I had conversations with David and Netty (teacher of the subject French) about the Dutch school system and how I am enjoying myself here. After Netty gave a French lesson to class 5 she also invited me to spend a day with her during a weekend so she could show me some nice things. She told me she was an au-pair in France in her twenties and knew how lonely the weekends could be.

As I said, I really like going to my work and the children are all so cute and adorable (and sometimes really annoying and obnoxious) but it does asks a lot of my energy, so I'm happy it's the weekends. Time to relax and gather some energy again.