Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences

The kids didn't have school today because of parent/teacher conferences but if your teacher requested a conferences, then the child was required to attend as well.  Max and Calvin did not have any conferences so they were home free all day but Tabitha had two scheduled.  Max had his friend, Eben, come over for the day.  Eben is from South Africa and the son of the #2 man in the South African Embassy here.  His mom has become a friend of mine as well.  Max and Eben did a little roaming around town but mostly played computer games for most of the day because we had a steady, cold rain all day long.  Listening to Eben speak perfect English to us and then some very foreign language to his dad on the phone was interesting.  His dad speaks with a very strong British accent to me but apparently, they speak Afrikaans at home.  I love all of these new cultures that we are learning about! (Ignore the blankets on the sofa, we are having the slipcover dry-cleaned!)

Tabitha had two parent teacher conferences because her physics teacher just wanted to meet me and make sure that she was giving us exactly what we need to allow Tabitha to get her diploma from the US at the end of the school year.  Very nice Belgian lady.  Tabitha's math teacher wanted to meet with us about moving Tabitha out of the high level math and into the standard level.  Just breaks our heart but appears to be necessary.  The math here is very high level and taught extremely quickly.  They are far into Calculus already which Tabitha had just started at the beginning of this year.  She does not have the groundwork to catch up so moving her back seems to be the way to go.  I think that even at the standard level, she will learn more than she would have at home so we are all okay with this decision.  Tabitha seems to be on track for every other course so we really can't complain.
After our conferences, Tabitha met up with 5 friends (one was a boy!) and they all came back to our flat for lunch and chatting.  The picture above shows what your front hall looks like when anyone comes over in Sweden.  Shoes are always taken off as soon as you come in the door and every home has cubbies for shoes and hooks for coats.  After hanging out here for a bit, the kids walked down to the huge and beautiful International library down the street to do some research before coming back here again to do homework. One friend is from Sweden, one from Greece, one from Peru, one from Holland and one from the US.  All were very nice, polite, intelligent and academically motivated!  I love it!
Quincy is getting a visit from his grandparents in St. Louis today!  I am hoping that he will send a picture or two.  I hate to not include him at all in this blog but he's not here and although we talk or text almost daily, I don't have too much to share.  He seems to be doing great in St. Louis and truly loves his school.  He is also really getting caught up in the St. Louis Cardinals right now as they get geared up for the World Series.  Pretty fun freshman year so far!