Saturday, August 12th - Students have arrived!!

We spent all of last weekend getting Jacqui's classroom ready. It must be said that her building was under renovation; there were no walls or windows at the start of last week. By Saturday morning, the windows were in, the walls had been painted, the white boards had been put up, but that was about it. There was a little bit of furniture in the classroom and all the toys had been dumped into the classroom next door. Over the weekend, they put up the bulletin boards (which were not decorated by the time students got there on Tuesday), and shelves were assembled on Sunday so we could start organizing the classroom as such. Blinds were put up on Monday.
We made the place functional for now, and will rearrange this coming weekend, which is a long weekend (Monday off for Mother's Day - Jacqui's third this year!). Jacqui has 11 students, aged 3 to 4, and a teacher's aid (TA). She is very much looking forward to it but is not crazy about the conditions that she was put in to start the year (it's the same thing for the other 3 teachers at that level). They have a very good team and everyone seems to be willing to work with each other; it should be a fun year.
I will be coaching Varsity Boys Volleyball, with another accompanying spouse (his wife works with Jacqui in PreK3!). We had a coaches meeting on Monday then everyone went out for drinks at a nearby restaurant (owned and operated by a fellow teacher at RIS).
Jacqui's students started on Tuesday, three at a time for about 20 minutes per group. Everything went well, and parents and students look really nice. Students were there for about an hour on Wednesday, for about 2 hours on Thursday and until noon of Friday. Some of them were obviously crying, but nothing that Jacqui cannot handle. She will have a good year; it is such a nice school!
Meanwhile, I spend my days shopping and doing little things that need to be done when you move to a new house - getting Internet and cable connected, finding out where to shop for this and that, ... SO far, I haven't been bored or haven't really stopped! Not sure if I would have the time to work! (OK, I did spend two mornings watching ball games; gotta love this 11 hours time difference!). Grocery shopping takes a long time, as I don't have a clue about what most of the stuff on the shelves is. Almost all the labels are written in Thai, which I do not read yet. There is also a whole lot of stuff that I have never seen before, and the stuff that I am familiar with does not seem to exist around here! There is a lot of guessing when I put something in my cart!!

Jacqui's classroom - it has come a long way in one week. It will get rearranged this weekend!