Well since my last post the moving process has shifted into high gear. My wife made the move to Zurich two weeks ago, so my daughter and I are learning how to take care of ourselves without a maternal influence. So far we haven’t gotten rickets, or scurvy, but may change soon. We are trying to clear out the freezers, and other food in the house, instead of throwing it away.
We have had many discussions in the US about illegal immigration, yet for the last two weeks, my wife has been living illegally in Switzerland. I simply find this kind of amusing. Her company dropped the ball on the Visa so she didn’t have a permanent visa when she got on the plane. This weekend, she is actually visiting Milan, Italy, so that Monday morning, she can visit the Swiss Consulate there and get a 90 day visa. Hopefully, this means at some point in the next three months, she will get her permanent visa, so that I can go over as well. Apparently my visa cannot be processed until her visa is approved.
I have signed up for German lessons. For me to be able to get a permanent visa I will have to show a basic knowledge of the language. I think that is a good idea, and I am looking forward to learning another language. One final note about moving; after being on the market for 5 weeks, and dropping the price twice, my realtor finally has some people coming to look at the house. I really hope someone this weekend falls in love with the house that has treated my family so well. It is going to be hard turning it over to another family, but I know whoever buys this place will have an excellent place to raise a family or simply to call home.
Last Monday began the training for my replacement at work. I have to admit it is going to be kind of strange the next two months. I have designed the training about teaching him simply how to keep things running. I encouraged my district not to hire another “George” but I think there is some apprehension in the air. I have always been the 1’s and 0’s guy. The one to get in and configure the firewall, or a switch. The implementation of technology in the classroom, has really only been a focus the last few years, I believed I needed to get the infrastructure and equipment in place, so that when someone wanted to access technology it would work the way it should. Dave has been in the classroom his entire career. His focus is going to be on implementation. Working with the teachers and students to ensure they are getting the most out of the technology they have access to. We have an excellent Network Administrator so Dave will have a good right hand man to keep the network running while he learns the technical parts of the job.
The strange part comes in, because I keep telling him 1 September…. That is the time he can start doing whatever he wants, but until then, it is still my network, and we are going to things the way I want. I am sure by the middle of August, he is going to want to strangle me. 🙂 .
10 July is going to be strange day. We bring in all the new educators that day. The technology department gets a 1/2 day to work with them on logging in, and explaining how things work, and then our HR department gets the second 1/2 to get all the business stuff done. We have found this to be incredibly effective. Now the new teachers get to come in and can immediately start working to prepare for the school year, and I don’t get constantly pulled from projects to get one person logged in and set up on the computer. What will be really weird is that I always take part of the day and explain how I view technology in the classroom, I try and get the new teachers excited about using technology with their students. This year it will be Dave giving that talk. It will be really hard to stay silent, and let him take the lead.