Saturday, September 1, 2012

First week of school!!


Joshua 1:9 - Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Sorry we haven't blogged in a while.  As you can imagine, the last 2 weeks have been quite hectic.  I'll try to catch you up on the happenings with the Wiisanens in Vienna!  We just completed our first week of school at ICSV!  It was a really good week.  We had some ups and downs, but overall a good week.  Prior to school starting we had a week of staff orientation/pre-planning week.  We had lots of meetings, learned about school policies and procedures, learned how to write lesson plans, wrote lesson plans, set up classrooms, made copies, made class syllabus, learned how to take attendance.  Well you get it, a lot of the behind the scenes, technical stuff that goes on at school.  Because Billy and I are teaching for the first time, we had lots to learn.  We have received so much help and encouragement from the ICSV staff and our friends here in Vienna.   We are grateful to God placing us here and providing the support we need to accomplish the His work.





Fun at all staff picnic before school started.

In addition to preparing to teach, I continue to learn how to cook, clean, do laundry, etc here in Vienna.  If you saw my Facebook post this week, you already know about my school supplies shopping adventure.  I successfully bought the supplies my children needed (woohoo!), but it was a challenge.  School supplies like many other things here are just "different".  So you go into the store with an idea about what you need and are looking for and it may or may not exist.  Then you must figure out what does exist and what will work in place of what you were hoping to buy!  That seems to be how most of our shopping trips have gone early on.  However, as I have become more familiar with things here, it is getting easier to shop!

School started on Tuesday, August 28th.  Billy and I were so excited to meet our students.  Our classes have gone well this first week and we have enjoyed getting to know the students.  The students in my 9th grade Health class are interactive and fun to talk with.  God continues to stretch me and grow me and cause me to rely on Him as I prepare to teach each day.  He has faithfully equipped me for each class!  Billy has a diverse cultural cross section of students in his Bible classes.  He loves the challenge of studying the Bible with his students.  He began by showing a video to his classes discussing New Testament manuscripts and why we could be confident in the Bible not just being a 'religious' document but also an accurate historical document.  Billy is also teaching a Physics class and administering a computer lab.




Family time at the Prater
 (amusement park near our apartment)

Mitchell and Lydia had a good first week of school too.  While they would always rather have vacation than school, I think they were glad to finally start so they could meet some other students.  Mitchell has had several opportunities to play soccer after school and is getting to know some of the other players.  He is also hoping to play in the praise band for High School chapel.  He has had a great attitude!  His biggest challenge right now is to learn German to satisfy his visa requirement.  Thankfully, along with his school German class, he will be getting German tutoring during his study hall (we thought he was going to have to attend a 3 hour class every evening for 8 weeks).  We are praying that this will meet with the approval of the visa office.

Lydia is making lots of friends and enjoying her classes.  She is excited to have "musical" as one of her electives!  I can't wait to see what they do for that class.  She is also taking German in school, but does not have the same visa requirements as Mitchell.

Last night (8/31/12) was the first "coffee house" at the school.  It is a time for the High School students to come hang out together, drink coffee, and play games.  For the kick off we also had hamburgers (yum!).  It was a great opportunity to interact with the students and get to know them outside of class.  I enjoyed watching Mitchell interact with the other kids.  Lydia stayed home with the daughters of another staff family and watched movies.  It made my heart smile when we came home and found the family room piled with blankets, pillows and sweet girls (6 total including our neighbor who is in Lydia's class and a friend) watching The Sound of Music!  God is good!

 Thankfully it's rainy and therefore cooler today!  Perfect weather to go hang out later with our friends, the Hooks, eat chili, and watch some college football!   Hope you have a great weekend!

Love and blessings,
Ada (aka "Miss" Clair)

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