April Vacation

April Vacation is almost over! We went to our first Revolution away game at the Meadowlands (NY Red Bulls 1:1 Revs) on Saturday. Since the girls had never been to NYC, we spent Sunday and Monday doing as much as can be packed into 2 days in New York. We hit Times Square, Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, the Empire State Building and Korea Town on Sunday, then Battery Park (for views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island), Ground Zero, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Times Square again (so Anika could ride the ferris wheel in Toys 'R Us) on Monday.

On Wednesday our old AFRC Chiemsee chums Dorothy (living in Boston) and Lynette (visiting from DC) came up to visit us, and we spent a couple of days in York, Ogunquit, and Portland before following them back into Boston on Friday night for dinner, caffe, and dessert in the North End then a stroll around Quincy Market.

Today the grill and deck furniture came back out, I mowed a bit, and Miyoung got all the leaves out of the gardens. Must be springtime! Just 6 more weeks of school for me before I'm off for Germany with the high school kids (23 of them) for their exchange with our partner school in Leverkusen.

OK, Let's have at this again...

I literally hadn't posted anything new here for so long that I'd more or less forgotten it existed until the bill for name registration and hosting for dougly.com came up. Now I'm thinking, if we're going to be paying for this thing, We'd might as well be using it, right?

So here we are... still living in York after more years than I thought we'd be. We finally bought a house we love in Cape Neddick (York) Maine halfway between the ocean and Mt. Agamenticus (and right along the Maine Turnpike). We've already been here for 2 years and will be here for plenty more as long as the Maine Turnpike Authority doesn't decide they want it.

I've managed to tenaciously hold onto my position teaching 7th and 8th grade German at Pentucket Regional Middle School in West Newbury, Massachusetts and will even have tenure after the summer vacation this year! I'm also co-coordinating the GAPP Exchange program at the High School and will be taking 23 students to Germany for a little over 3 weeks in June, first to our partner school in Leverkusen and then traveling south through Bavaria and Austria for several days.

Annika is 5 (wow!) already and is attending the Brixham Montessori Friends School in York, which she loves. Miyoung left Stonewall Kitchen to take over the school's aftercare program this year, and next year she'll be an assistant classroom teacher as well as the head aftercare teacher. She's very popular with the kids, though she finds their energy levels in the afternoon a bit challenging.

We're also pleased to report that now that it's the middle of April there's almost no snow left in our yard. Hurray!