The Break-In

It has been a heavy week. The students were rather difficult and I ended up getting rather sick. The worst moment was when I could not get a class of first-years to quiet down and I ended up taking my last resort of getting the assistant principal to come in and have a talk with them. They were much better afterwards, but I still ended up having to break up a fight between two of the boys. This was Thursday.

A nearby windmill built in 1648 that was able to pump 30,000-35,000 liters
 of water per minute from the lake into the river.

Friday I ended the day barely standing after keeping a group of students for 45 minutes after school because they did not finish their assignment. After this I had to sit through a long meeting in Dutch where I almost fell asleep. The purpose of the meeting was nice though - Naomi and I are helping to chaperone two classes to the Ardennes (where the Battle of the Bulge took place) on Wednesday. It is common practice for schools in the Netherlands to camp out for a couple days in order to get to know each other a bit better.

Close-up of that same windmill.

This weekend has been quite the recovery period. I still feel sick and exhausted. Saturday morning was quite the experience. We got up early to run some errands and kept forgetting things, so we would return to the house. Many Dutch doors do not have knobs that turn - so they lock behind you. On one of these trips into and out of the house, I shut the door behind me, only to realize I had left the keys inside the house. Hiding a key has been on my long list of things to do...

A small regatta in front of expensive houses.

So we had to figure out how to break into our own house. After a few failed attempts with a piece of bamboo through the mail slot, I surveyed our options, and became fixated on the small window over one of the doors. I was able to open it from the outside, and felt the wood frame start to give. After removing the rotting chunk of wood I precariously balanced a garden chair on the small stoop and began to push in the screen. Finally, a way in had been made...now all I needed was to find a way to stay out of the hospital...

The Aftermath.

Naomi to the rescue. I convinced her that because she is small and likes rock climbing, she makes the perfect candidate. I helped her through the tiny window, but we realized there was a problem because we keep the bottom deadbolt locked. Luckily there was a hula hoop within her reach, and she was able to use to to pull the latch open. Magically the door moved - we had forgotten to lock the deadbolt! Naomi got a bit scraped and bruised (hard to see in the picture), but with a whole lot of luck we managed to stay out of the hospital.

To pour salt in the wound, after we had finally made it to the grocery store, Naomi locked up her bike and realized she had left that key in the house. One more trip home. So much for that early start.

The tallest hedge I have ever seen.

This morning we took a nice walk around the lake that is very near to our house. The other pictures on this post come from that walk. Hopefully the rest of the day can be restful as this coming week will require quite some energy.