A trip to Big Parrot, Giant Cockatiel, no wait...GRAN CANARIA

I have just returned from a great, relaxing, and sunny week in Gran Canaria, Spain. The Canary Islands are off the west coast of Africa, but belong to Spain. Click here for a quick map.  If you are wondering, (and why wouldn't you be) they are called the Canary Islands because they found a lot of wild dogs here at some point...canine...get it? I think the bird was named after the island. Although, we saw only pigeons and seagulls while we were here. 

Oh, and one duck with small pox or something, (see picture). 

Small Pox Duck
But, where are the canaries?

According to Wikipedia, the Canaries were mentioned even by the Greeks and the Egyptians so there have been people here for quite awhile. They are all volcanically formed and hilariously, the guide on a tour we did, tried to tell us that there was a new island rising up out of the ocean and it would be here in 2-4 years. Not sure how that's going to work but keep paying attention to the news because apparently geologic time is greatly sped up here. 

First view of the island from the plane!

There are also a lot of plant species endemic to the island and we got to see a few really cool looking cacti and one species of pine trees that are found nowhere else on earth. The guide tried to tell us that they are the only species of trees on earth that have an adaptation to protect their trunks from fire but I am such a natural resource nerd and remember my forest ecology...so I nerdily laughed to myself that in fact the Ponderosa Pine (and probably others) have that same adaptation...an insulated cambium layer...yeah, see, I am REALLY nerdy (although I am hoping that Dawn, Katie, and Rachel read this and NRRT laugh along with me!).  (As an aside, I always make fun of my friend Sandy for being a bird nerd, but let's be honest, I love plants and that is pretty darn nerdy as well.) 

Be careful of those spines!

¡Ay! Eso me duele el dedo!

Our flight was a charter with a travel agency like you would do to Mexico or something in the US. And so, we were able to fly directly to Gran Canaria instead of having a layover somewhere. So, really, we left Germany at 7am, had a four and a half hour flight, and were standing in our hotel lobby with our complimentary champagne by noon- not too shabby. 

Our room wasn't quite ready when we got there and so we were just chilling in the "snack bar" and found out that there were all sorts of frou frou drinks available to us as part of our all-inclusive package. I have never been on a trip like this before (I am not counting India because though that trip was completely paid for, catered, and we stayed in really nice hotels, it was work-related and we were not just sitting by the pool all day!) where you just hang out and do nothing if you choose (which we chose!).  I'm not complaining in any way, I have had the opportunity to do lots of cool things, but this is my first "all inclusive" vacation at a resort as I've never been to Mexico or anything. Usually, my beach vacays are to Charleston, SC, which is always SUPER fun but sadly, Maura doesn't wait on me hand and foot (I may have to now reconsider our friendship!). 

View from our room. It was worth the extra €45 to have a view!

So, we've spent the last 7 days just chilling by the pool and swilling drinks while we made sure to reapply our sunscreen as much as necessary. I am a freak about getting sunburned after all those times in my life where my first day on a vacation, I get fried and then the rest of the trip is miserable. So, with my American-purchased SPF 50, I worked hard to not get a sunburn...first world problems. I relistened to a David Sedaris book and was the freaky girl laughing hysterically to herself without anything in front of me...so I looked extra weird as Lauren slept in the chair next to me. 

I WILL be outside, even it is a bit chilly.
Not to worry, this only happened one day!

The food was really good, we especially loved breakfast and I was able to have my favorite morning tradition...a drinks smorgasbord of diet coke, coffee, and a water. They even had ICE CUBES so Lauren and I made ourselves glass after glass of ice water. AND...there was a diet coke fountain so that made my vacation just that much better. We played a game at breakfast called "guess the British" by seeing who was eating baked beans for breakfast. Though I do enjoy this some days, I've noticed people eating plate after plate of beans and black pudding (reminder: black pudding is BLOOD SAUSAGE and I won some last year in England at the meat raffle! Yep, the meat raffle! I just couldn't stomach it and watching people load up on it- is just gross to me. I can't be culturally sensitive to this one!) 

This was a lunch drinks smorgasbord...beer, water, diet coke.
I did this at every meal. Lauren joined in too!

They also had stacks and stacks of Manchego cheese...the best cheese ever. So, needless to say (I basically have already said it) we did not miss a meal!  As I did no research before coming on this trip, I wasn't  sure what else there was to do here.  I almost got my fill of just laying around...almost. The landscape is very interesting.  It is very desert-like and reminds me of New Mexico or Arizona but next to an ocean. There is little vegetation and on the manicured areas, there are palm trees and ornate cacti. 

Some interesting desert plants with some, very obviously, volcanic rock.
The science teacher in me comes out on trips like this.
This island would have been a PERFECT place for a good geology field trip.

The first night there was a Flamenco show and the other nights there were  acrobats, crappy lounge singers, or something. We were basically on like a cruise for 70 year olds, but I was totally fine with that as I was just ready to relax. The last night there was a Lionel Ritchie cover singer. HA HA HA HA! Seriously? We laughed so hard about that one and made sure to check it out since I do have (an entirely fake) obsession with Lionel. I had some books on my coffee table that had been retired from the CBMS library about Lionel. They were always a really amusing conversation starter when people came over to my house in Fort Collins.

Well, as the week progressed, the cruise-ship-like entertainment worsened and once every single night called for audience participation, we skipped out. We have made some delightful British friends from the Isle of Man (where they speak Manx and have those Manx cats- the ones without tails) and so we chatted and got drinks with them after our dinners were over. I have to say that besides the baked beans for breakfast, the Brits are also given away by their crazy-intense sunburns. Now, maybe if I had lived in a cloudy, grey place my whole life too, I would go a bit nuts in the sun when I actually got to see it...but...it cannot be fun to spend your entire vacation charbroiled and red. The Germans seem to put on sunscreen while the Brits just get more lobster-like by the day. You can tell how long people have been here by how red they really are. Hilarious and I am glad for them that they have a good national healthcare system to deal with all of their impending skin cancer removals! 

Trip to the sand dunes at Maspalomas. 

We had two "away from the hotel" adventures as we were purposely as lazy as humanly possible this week. We REALLY committed the deadly sin of sloth and did a DAMN good job of it. There were naps a-plenty, inside and outside. But, our first excursion was to the nearby town of Maspalomas where there are large sand dunes right at the edge of the ocean. This was just a quick trip and worth it because the views of the mountains while you're standing on a beach are pretty darn cool.

The adventure continues..."Jeep" Safari

Our next excursion was a full-day "jeep safari" which was really a Toyota Land Cruiser without a roof. We sat in the way back on side-facing seats across from a young Belgian couple who we inevitably made friends with after bouncing around in a dusty "jeep" for 8 hours together. This tour drove us up into the mountains which actually made me extremely homesick because it looked so much like the American West...especially the clear blue sky. Clear blue sky is definitely missing from Northern Europe most of the time. I know that I have said this before but I can completely relate to Van Gogh and how he FLIPPED OUT upon seeing sunshine since it is so super grey in northern Europe. I think I'd flip out too if I'd never seen that kind of blue sky and then was thrust into it. I kind of freak now but only because I know what I'm missing. 

If this picture was closer up, you could see that we are completely covered in dust.

The roads were really windy and so we were pretty much nauseous the entire trip but it was still really fun. We saw many beautiful villages full of white stucco houses and red Spanish tile roofs (wait, do you think that is why they are called SPANISH tile? HA!). We got to visit some natural areas and then we stopped for lunch at a CAMEL PARK! Again, according to Wikipedia, camels are native to the area of Africa near the Canary Islands so they have been found there for a long time. Lauren had already ridden a camel to the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and thought that this camel ride would be a let-down after that (I'm sure it would have been!)...but I love camels and think they are seriously cute and funny so I will take any opportunity I can, even though they are quite smelly. There was also a baby camel named Nestor in the pen and it was so incredibly cute. I couldn't shake the feeling though that I was riding a Ton-Ton in Star Wars!

YEEHAW!!!!

After the short ride, the camels all got super dolled up!
 It was Friday, after all!
(Or wait, maybe this was just the sign for the Women's Restroom!)

Oh Nestor, you are so cute.
Nestor loved people and loved having her ears scratched! .

Then, after lunch, the "off-roading" portion began. I've driven on roads similar to these roads in the mountains of Colorado- rocky, dusty, and narrow- but never at the speed at which we were doing it! It was a really good thing that I wasn't driving, otherwise the off-roading experience would have been done at about 10 miles per hour and it wouldn't have been nearly as exciting. It was like being on a really dirty, bumpy roller coaster and also reminded me a lot of sitting in the back of the school bus as a child and cheering and laughing when we went over bumps. You couldn't help but wildly giggle the entire time. We got progressively dirtier as the time passed and our driver (who would get out a sociology textbook and highlight it at every stop!)  had the right idea by pulling a neck gator over his whole face to protect himself from the dust...although he did totally look like a bank robber and so that made us laugh even that much harder because we felt like a getaway car! 

Driver of the "getaway car" or just of the tour.
He had to spare his lungs and eyes because he was doing homework at every single stop!

They allowed us to get out a few times and talked to us about the plant life of the area. The variety of cactus species was amazing and also very beautiful. It was so nice to be in a different landscape than what I am used to. Also, being an island with mountains, the climate is extremely varied and depending on the direction that a slope might face, the vegetation and the look are completely different. 

The Candelabra Cactus. I thought it looked more like Churros.
Mmmmm, churros.

This vacation was well worth the money, in fact, I spent less than I normally would on a week's trip when you factor in airfare, food, and hotel, and it was great to see the sun and relax. I recommend the Canary Islands to anyone who wants a dry air (important to me now that I lived in Damp-ville), blue sky vacation where you can be slothy and drink lots of umbrella drinks. Delightful.

Roof-top bar at our hotel. 

Now I have to get back to the "real life" of teaching. I have a new colleague starting on Monday who will be teaching the same thing as me, so that will be fun and interesting. And, I can countdown to my next trip...a road trip to France with my friends Lauren and Keith to visit the family with whom I lived last year in only 5 weeks! I really enjoy the school schedule with the shorter summer and more frequent breaks throughout the year...there is always something on the horizon to look forward to! And, I love me a good road trip. 

Professional development...not so professional poetry...

This weekend I attended the Association of German International Schools (AGIS) Conference in Hanover, Germany. It was a lot of fun getting to meet more of my colleagues and making connections with teachers around Germany in the other international schools. We had a lot of great professional and not-so-professional conversations and laughed all weekend.

My friend (and teacher twin), Lauren, and I presented about using critical thinking strategies in formative and summative assessment. In went well and we were even given an offer to present for a technology company's annual meeting in September in Berlin! WAHOO!

On Saturday night, they had a dinner for everyone and then asked each person or group of people, to write a little something about the AGIS conference for the 10th anniversary of the organization. They suggested limericks or haikus. Well, to be honest, the minute I hear the word limerick, I think of...

There once was a girl from Nantucket....


So, I wrote it down as our first line and as you'll see, our poem just degenerated from there. The organizers read it out to the whole conference and as we had "anonymously" submitted it, we weren't too known for the composition except by our own ISD colleagues!

None of this is actually true...by the way.

**I must quickly explain that my Nana used to work at a really fancy restaurant and people would come in and order Merlot and pronounce is as Mer-lett or Mer-LOTT. I had just told Lauren this story on the train to Hanover and she busted out the word Mer-LOTT to rhyme with A LOT!...this is similar to calling Filet Mignon as Fill-lett Mig-Nann.***

Awkward Emergencies...

A few weeks ago, my friend Kendra had a blog post about awkward moments.

Click here to read it because it is super funny. 

But, on that note...I have to add one of my own that JUST happened but it was so uncomfortably awkward that it warrants immediately writing about it.

I was just finishing up some school work and went into my kitchen to make some tea when I noticed that my kitchen sink was completely full with dark blue water. Like that color. It was close to 9 pm and I wasn't sure what to do. So, I did what I always do in house emergencies...I called my mom. She suggested plunging so I tried. But, the water just kept getting higher and I was freaking out. I turned off the washing machine just in case it was that. (By the way, washing machines in Germany are often in the kitchen. Mine is directly next to the kitchen sink and was well into hour two of one load. Yes, you read that correctly...hour two for one load.)

Next, I called my friend Keith because he has lived in Germany for 7 years and knows what to do in most situations. He told me to go get my Hausmeister (which is like a building superintendent). As I was talking to him the water started getting higher and higher. I was taking my coffee pot and filling it with icky blue water (it was the first large receptacle I could think to grab) and then dumping it in the toilet so that I wouldn't have water spilling all over my kitchen.

I scrambled to put on my shoes and started to run out the door. BUT WAIT! I can't just run out the door. I have no idea how to say BLUE WATER IS FILLING UP MY KITCHEN SINK! IT IS STARTING TO OVERFLOW EVERYWHERE in German. I can get as far as Ich habe ein gross problem....I have a big problem...and then I can't explain the actual problem. So, while I can hear the water starting to go down the side of the cabinet, I was trying to google translate and write down as fast as I could so I would be able to explain when I got to his door.

The Hausmeister lives in the building next door. So, I ran (after waiting in my super slow elevator...it takes a full minute to go down 7 flights...I should have taken the stairs!) to the building next door in my complex where my Hausmeister lives. I rang his buzzer and of course the minute he says hello, I start speaking French. HA! My brain went right to it. I couldn't even remember to say "Herr Hausmeister," I said, "Monsieur Hausmeister."

So, I waited about two minutes for him to come to the door and showed him my quickly scribbled note. He's in his late 70s- I would guess- so was probably not really prepared to suddenly run next door. We went to my building and entered the elevator. Now, here's where it was super awkward. It is a tiny elevator, it is slow, and I can only say things in German like Was kostet der Drucker? which means "How much does the printer cost?" which  unfortunately was not the right sentence for this situation! We both just awkwardly stared at the wall of the elevator until I tried to act out what was happening in my apartment with my arms and very broken German. Yeah...like that helped.

The water had gone down a little bit when we got into my apartment (YAY) but he was able to plunge it enough to get it to go down. I opened the stopped washing machine and took out the soaking wet clothes, and what do you know...blue water filled the bottom of the washer. Something plumbing-wise is backed up between the washer and the sink. But, why the hell was the water blue? I was washing nothing blue except for a pair of old jeans that I had washed like 50 times.

So, now my soaking wet clothes are hanging on the line on the balcony. And, given Germany's damp climate, they'll be dry sometime next week. I was being proactive and washing my favorite jeans tonight so that they'd be dry by the weekend. Yes, that is the kind of pre-planning one must do when one doesn't own a dryer in a damp climate. Once they stop dripping I can hang them next to the radiator (which, btw, was not working until this morning when it miraculously decided to work and heated the room up to a billion degrees...Celsius...this is Germany!) and they'll dry in like two days instead of five.

But, through all this, (all this, as if I have just been through a trauma...I'm a bit dramatic), the thing that i like the best is that I can call a landlord to fix things. I do not have to try to deal with it on my own. It made me, once again, glad that I no longer own a home. I just don't think I am cut out for home ownership...too many things go wrong that I don't know how to manage. I love that I can call someone tomorrow and have someone else pay to have things fixed. Delightful.

So, there it is. My awkward, google-translated "emergency." I'm laughing to myself about what a dumb-ass I am at German as I write this. I wonder how long it will take in my brain until French is not my automatic go-to foreign language?

Well, until then, at least I've got google translate.

2011: Life lessons from a crazy year.

Out of all of my adult years, 2011 was probably the most random so far. Over the course of the year, I lived in 4 countries, spent 8 months unemployed, and had some pretty cool adventures. Reflecting back, I learned a lot. Below are some pictures and the "lessons" I learned. 

Lesson: You can turn anything into a French tarte with a little egg, cheese, and cream. (Hey...I didn't say these lessons were going to be profound.) 

I started the year with a three month stay with a family in France “teaching” them English. Mostly, I became their friend, cook, nanny, space-taker-upper, and errand runner. It was a really fun time and as my blog indicated at the time, made me realize the true importance of Love and Logic in parenting and teaching.

The Louaisil Family. My "French Family" for three months.

I learned a lot trying to teach English as a second language.
Sang lots of songs and realized a lot of idiosyncrasies in American pronunciation when teaching to people who had studied British English in school.

I spent a lot of my time in France baking and cooking for the family.
The boys, Steven & Léo had a MAJOR sweet tooth.
They LOVED my American sugar cookies for Valentine's Day.

Lesson:  Make choices you feel good about when you can.  

In January, I attended a job fair and got to make the decision between a job in Kuwait or a job in Germany and as I’ve said before, the option with pork and alcohol prevailed and I moved to Germany. The job fair was a refreshing change because everyone there spoke my “teacher language.” After teaching in England last year, I was ready to quit being a teacher. So, going to a place where they understood me really renewed my hope that I could be a teacher again. Not wanting to be a teacher made me a little (a lot) lost. It is part of who I am. Being told everyday that I was so bad at it also made me think that it wasn’t for me. Fortunately, I’ve managed over the last few months to “uninternalize” my horrible teaching reviews and to regain my self-efficacy in the classroom. 

A quick afternoon layover in Paris on my way to the JOB FAIR that changed my life.

Lesson: Surround yourself with positive people. (Alternative wording: There are grumps everywhere...stay away from them!) 

My new school is not perfect, but I’ve come to realize that nowhere is and that I need to find the people who share my passion, my philosophy, and devote my energy to them instead of trying to fight the people with whom I don’t see eye to eye. This was something that I had figured out how to do at CBMS, but I’d lost sight of. I’m working on it.

The results of the job fair.
It was "on a wing & a prayer" then but feels like home now!

Lesson: Unless I win the lottery, I need to have a job at least just for entertainment purposes. 

At the beginning of April, I headed back to Chesham (or “Crapham” as I like to call it) where I awaited my various visitors. My first visitors were my parents and we had a really fun time around England. There's a reason I've turned out to be such a nerd...it is inherited! We read a lot of history while on our trip AND even downloaded a 2-hour National Geographic video on Stonehenge to watch the night before our visit. Though it was so much fun having people visit, the times in between were some of the hardest. I was unemployed, in a small, absolute shit-hole town with no car and no money, and I was living with a roommate in a 500 square feet flat who had canceled our internet and tv while I was in France. I had many, many, many visits to the public library and spent many-a-day in Starbucks using their free internet. I also took extremely long walks pretty much everyday. One would think that it would be fun to just have endless time to do nothing but when you’re by yourself in a foreign country and can’t spend any money, it just isn’t.

My parents came to visit and we managed not to back our car into Stonehenge like the Griswolds.

Lesson: It is possible to have a sore face from laughing too much.

But, in between the down times, I had three amazing trips with friends! Nicole came to visit and we traveled to the Scottish Highlands and then walked our legs off in London. We laughed so hard and so much that a few times, our guide told us that we were not allowed to laugh on the bus anymore! Scotland was beautiful and Nicole and I were perfect travel partners due to our extreme nerdiness for things like Tudor history and the other English/Scottish monarchs and conflicts. We took every available audio tour and thought it was funny that we could reference historical events and people from watching “The Tudors” on Showtime. I will definitely never forget “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” (Those are the fates of the six wives of Henry VIII!!)

The Scottish Highlands with Nicole. Isle of Skye.

"The Highlander" Castle.

Trafalgar Square. One of my favorite views of London.

Gordon was my next visitor. We rented a car and drove around England and Wales. Gordon's family immigrated from Wales to Pennsylvania and his grandmother's church songs are even still sung in Welch. It was a beautiful country and we had a great time jetting around in our Fiat "Panda" rental car. Gordon drove. I was too chickenshit to drive on the the other side of the road but I am an awesome navigator (especially with the GPS really doing the work!). We didn't have a super-specific itinerary and would often just see something in the book, set the GPS for it and drive there. Most entertaining for us was trying to decipher the Welch language. I'll never forget the word "araf" which means "slow." It is painted on all of the roads since most of them were windy and one-car wide. A few times we had to back down a road because another car/tractor was coming the other way and it was too narrow to pass.

Tinturn Abbey in Wales with Gordon.
This isn't on the "Top 100 Places to See Before You Die" Lists but it should be.

Welsh Castle with Welsh Man. 

London! THE picture.

My last visitor was Natalie. We were power tourists like I've never seen. We saw more in five days in London and Paris than most people see in several weeks. My favorite part of our whole trip was sitting at sidewalk cafés in Paris and looking at each other every few minutes saying, "OH MY GOD. WE ARE IN PARIS!" I've been before several times, but it never gets old and being there with Natalie awesome. We also learned a mini-lesson while there...we are not fine dining people. We spent a lot of money eating at a very fancy restaurant and realized that we're much more suited to a baguette, a wheel o' brie, and une bouteille de vin! We also laughed really hard every single day. All day. Even the trip home on the plane was fun. Literally, even single minute of this trip (even while we were sleeping) was fun.

I made Nat do it too!
We had SO much fun on our trip!

Eiffel Tower at night with Natalie.

Lesson: Colorado rocks.
I went home to Colorado for the summer. It was needed (for one thing, I was unemployed and poor). But, being away makes you appreciate what you've left. Besides the people, which is obviously the number one reason it is hard living elsewhere, there are aspects of Colorado that I just didn't appreciate enough when I lived there. The sunshine is just different in Colorado. You never know how much you need the 300 days of sunshine until you live in a really cloudy, high-latitude place and it gets dark in the middle of the afternoon and doesn't get light until well after 8 am for several months at a time. Yes, the summer days are longer in Northern Europe, but it isn't worth it for the super short winter days, if you ask me. Damp, raininess sucks. I think I could live in rainy England or Germany my whole life and never stop complaining about the weather after living the majority of my 33 years in Colorado. It was funny teaching about the seasons in a place that has so little seasonal variation.

In my Colorado memories, the quality of the sunlight is different depending on what time of year the memory occurred. When I think of CSU homecoming or football games, I think of how the light is in Fort Collins in the fall when the leaves are all yellow. In summer memories, I think about the sun being directly above filtering through the trees in Old Town Fort Collins (specifically the trees that used to perch above my house that were so tenuously held up that sometimes I wanted to sleep in a ski helmet lest one of them bisect my house!). This is not something that I can relate to after two years in Northern Europe. Isn't it that Jonie Mitchell song that says, "you don't know what you've got 'til it is gone!" It is true. I've never been one to have moods affected by the seasons...but, duh, I kind of doubt that problem even exists in Colorado.

Summer with family and friends!
German restaurant the night before leaving for Germany.

Courtney, Megan, and I had some fun times!

My Tiger Girls!

Painted with Mom.

Lesson: I have a lot of crap/Mexican food sucks in Europe.
Moving to Germany was like leaving for college all over again in terms of getting all of my junk there. I had shipped three boxes from England and checked 3, 50-lb. suitcases and had two extremely heavy carry-on bags. Each time someone comes to visit me and each time I go home and come back to Europe, I have to pack and repack my bags in order to get everything I want back with me. This is a combined lesson because a lot of the stuff I bring over are ingredients for making Mexican food...specifically lots of green chilis. One would think that one could live without them, but one would be wrong. It is worth it to have all of this luggage each time, because truly, I just can't give up Mexican food for dinner on a regular basis. Sounds trite, I know. But, sometimes, you just have to do what you have to do.

Moving to Germany.
What you can't see is that the plane could barely get in the air due to my immense amount of luggage.

Lesson: The socio-economic status of middle schoolers is irrelevant to their need for relationship-driven classroom management. 
At my school in England, I was not allowed to take the time to set up my classroom rituals and routines the way that I know is important. In finding a new school, this is something I continuously asked about during interviews. So, when school started this year, I spent the first week and a half in the exact same way that I did at CBMS.  My school now has a completely different population than CBMS in pretty much every way imaginable, except for one thing...they are still all middle school-aged kids. The kids at my new school have responded extremely well to all of the expectations we set at the beginning of the year. Love and Logic works on them the same way it works on any other kids I've met. Because I was allowed to take the time to do this, my job is fun again. The other day I was just sitting working in my room between classes and realized that I am having so much fun again as a teacher. I know that there are many extraneous factors that contribute to that fact, but being allowed to do things the way I know they should be done makes a huge difference. We have fun in my class, me included. That's a good feeling. (Sidenote: I believe even more now in the book Drive by Daniel Pink. He says that people need autonomy in order to be motivated. I am a walking example of this. When I had extremely limited autonomy in how I did things in my English school, my levels of motivation and self-efficacy plummeted. If you haven't read it, you should.)

Poster-maker in my living room.
Classroom management is important no matter who you teach!

Lesson: Metacognition is important. 
I've talked so much about this before that I won't belabor it again now. But, I have learned again and again that being able to name how/why/in what ways you are thinking is really important. More than ever, I believe that kids need to be good critical thinkers...especially when you consider that the entire internet is basically in our pockets now with smart phones. Kids need to be good information sifters. Humans need to be good information sifters.

Teaching "The Thinking Strategies" to my new students.

Lesson: Sometimes the simplest things are the most important. 
There are many many contexts where that last lesson can be applied but I'm sticking with my own classroom for the purpose of today. I learned a new "Thinking Routine"this year for helping kids construct scientific explanations and it has literally changed the way I structure almost every assignment. It is the crux of what science is about. How I've managed to get through seven other years of teaching without doing this is now beyond me. Giving kids (or adults) a specific framework in which to put their thinking really allows them to understand content instead of getting lost in format. Because kids are getting so good at using this framework, we can really focus on their claims and how scientists use evidence to create theories. (I sure could have used this in the past when I had parents come in and tell me that a) they didn't want me to teach about global warming because they "didn't believe in it in their family" or b) they wanted me to teach evolution as only a "theory." I could have given them a lesson in this thinking routine so that they could understand that I WAS TEACHING EVOLUTION AS A THEORY...a SCIENTIFIC THEORY BASED ON EVIDENCE!)

The "Thinking Routine" that has changed my teaching.
I'm a teacher dork no matter where I live.

Lesson: If your family is far away, create a new one.

I have made some really great friends since moving to Düsseldorf. Living in a foreign country where you don't speak the language is sometimes quite hard (don't get me started on how I now view the plight of immigrants to America...that is another post...but I've gained some serious empathy for them while living here!). Having new friends with which to laugh, commiserate, drink wine, etc. makes all the difference.

My Düsseldorf "Family," the Brydens.
Thanks to Rachel Larimore for connecting us! 

Dressed up for the Christmas party.
My very own Linda Richman. Lauren from Long Island.
I'll give you a topic. The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss.
Ralph Finnes is spelled as neither Rafe nor Fines. Discuss.

I found costume-loving friends here too!
YAY! Can't wait for Carnival in February!

Lesson: There is a gene for silliness in my family and it goes back many generations.

I had another fun visit with my parents this fall when they came to Germany. I also got to go to Denmark twice to visit my cousins there. Every visit to Denmark is so much fun because we laugh so much. Every trip with my parents is also a lot of fun! This time I took them to Amsterdam and we discovered the small town in Germany from which my mom's side immigrated.

I will not lie. It is pretty cool to do things like this.
I had one foot in Germany and one in France!

Parents visited again.
Weather was great.
Beer was cold.
Great time!

Mosel River. Such a great trip!

My parents are ALWAYS willing to do the dorky tourist pictures.
Makes traveling with them just so much fun!

Got to visit my AWESOME Danish cousins twice this year!
Terese & Nina are obviously related to me due to their love of ridiculous pictures.

Lesson: Given enough time and effort, even an Easy Bake Oven can create Thanksgiving dinner.
(And see lesson about creating your own family when your's is far away!) 
Everyone likes stuffing their face on Thanksgiving...even if it is your first one because you aren't American (or Canadian!). Everyone learns pretty quickly. I may not have made as many side dishes as I normally would, but I am DAMN proud of that enormous meal in my ridiculously tiny oven.

Wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with friends cooked in an Easy Bake oven.
International crowd for my current international life.

Lesson: Christmas lights and mulled wine can really take the sting out of a short, Northern European winter day.
Experiencing German Christmas Markets was one of the main highlights of living here so far. And, since being back from Christmas vacation, the streets in downtown Düsseldorf feel empty and sad without the stands of yummy treats, warm glühwein, and cutesy items for sale.

Christmas Markets in Germany have been one of the highlights of living here.

So there you have it. 2011 in a nutshell. I wouldn't say that I made any super-amazing, profound, Earth-shattering discoveries, but overall, it was a pretty good year.

2012. New year. New experiences. Pretty exciting prospects.