Lake Life Is the Best Life….Lake Day Essentials

As an Arizona girl, I never thought you would hear me say this: Lake life is the best! My experience with lakes prior to moving to Michigan included small, smelly man made lakes that you couldn’t see your feet in. For me, that is a big NO. Upon relocating, DonJuan wanted to buy a lake house, to which I said…No. This is me kicking myself and trying to finagle a way to sell our house and buy a lake house. Since the are no lake homes in my future, I have to make do with lake glamp outs. After several…

At home parties…yes please

As moms, and especially educator moms, we all know someone (or are someone) who has a business of selling things to other moms. You know the kind of things moms need…essential oils, cleaning products, makeup. You name it, and there is an at home party for it, and you have undoubtedly been invited to it. My husband hates it when I get invited to the ‘pyramid’* parties. I think he hates it even more when I host them, but ya know…hostess perks, free stuff, discounts!!!! How can I resist the things moms need and discounts? Seriously though. Here is the…

Adventures End

From the principal’s office…Day 10 Even though the day is not technically over, I am doing today’s post because soon enough, it will be over for me. Today was another mountain adventure. I have a feeling that with all the mountains around here, I could have a new mountain adventure every weekend for a looonnnngggg time. Kathryn, Phillip, and Laura had a mountain race today. They completed a 5k up 680m at 32% incline. I also completed this same course, only I walked it with Claudia and It took us just over an hour. I’m sure my glutes, hamstrings, and…

One of the BEST adventures

From the Principal’s office …day 9 Remember the scene in Bruce Almighty, that old Jim Carrey Movie where he wakes up as God and his day goes perfectly, from the traffic lights all being green to having a parking spot in the front of his office… well that was my day today. Everything was perfectly timed. The day started before my alarm went off, by about two hours. Go figure. I used that time to get caught up on work related stuff. We had a delicious breakfast of our favorite muesli, and went to the bus stop to meet the…

Adventuring ie: herding cats

From the Principal’s office…Day 8 Today was a zoo day, and we took the nordketta up the mountain to the alpenzoo. I didn’t get to walk around and check out animals because I was talking with Rosi about when the Austrians visit Jackson, and transportation issues for excursions. When we came down from the mountain, we got the kids back to the school for pick up. As we were waiting we heard one of the students (not ours) drop a loud F bomb. This was after hearing several SH bombs at the zoo, again, not our students. One of the…

Adventuring this much requires caffeine….and liquor

From the Principal’s office, day 7 Today was a shadow day for the students. They spent the whole day experiencing the school day from the Austrian student’s perspective. I am looking forward to our meeting tomorrow to debrief with them and hear the details of their day and their thoughts on the experience. In my world today, I had vending machine coffee…voluntarily. Yes, I too was highly skeptical because my only experience with vending machine coffee involves hospitals and scalding hot watered down yucktastic ‘coffee’. I put in my euro…one single euro… and out comes a nice cup of creamy…

Austrian Adventure…another day, another reminder that patience is in fact a virtue

From the Principal’s office Day 6… Today was a lesson on flexibility. Sometimes Type A people have difficulty with this. Since I am a recovering Type A..I rolled with it pretty well. I guess I should start at the beginning. We arrived at the AGI and met up with the kiddos and their host siblings. we were all set to meet with them for an hour of discussion and reflection, an then off to the scavenger hunt at 10. Well…due to testing schedules, we had to have our host siblings back by 11:30, so we had to start early…before many…

Austrian Adventure…almost halfway

From the Principal’s office…Day 5 It was so great to see the kids today! They were excited to see each other, and their excitement was hard to contain. We met at Schloss Ambras today and toured the castle, tried on a partial suit of armor, and ate lunch in the gardens. I could have spent all day there, but we were off the other adventures. Our original plan was to take a train in a straight shot to the Bergisel, but, similar to Jackson, it appears to be orange cone season in Innsbruck and the trains were down, so we…

Austrian Adventure…yep, still there

From the Principal’s office….Day 4 The view from foreign eyes…yes….So let me start with the toilet paper debate. You know the one, (if someone manages to put the roll on the dispenser instead of just sitting it ON the dispenser) should it roll over or under.? Well it seems the Europeans are ahead of the curve on this one. I have noticed that in public restrooms that have the household dispenser, (as opposed to the industrial dispenser) and the homes I have visited, they have this tp guard that insures that you dispense in the right direction. See picture. Problem…

Austrian Adventure….still

From the principal’s ‘office’…day three Something happened that has likely never happened in recorded history: I overslept. Not talking about 5-10 minutes, talking almost 9 am. I probably wouldn’t have even woken up then had Kathryn not awakened me. It’s ok though because today my friends, was Principal’s Day Off. After another amazing and delicious breakfast of Meusli, (which I might add, I will probably have to go to the meusli store and get some to bring home…and yes, there is a store here entirely dedicated to this delicious food source that I have always avoided because of my fear…