Day 1730. Yesterday was Pentecost Monday, which is a holiday in Austria. I had two students in the morning, from 10 to noon. I decided to try to use my new office downstairs, now that it's physically separated from the kids' play area, but not accustically. So I put my headset on, but the kids were still pretty loud for me while teaching. In the afternoon I had one more student that I also taught downstairs. Then I did office work, as well as continuing to set up my new office, moving stuff and putting stuff on shelves. Randy has also been working on the kids' area, and so it's slowly taking shape and getting to where it should be. It's time to take some pictures again.
Today I moved all my students to the morning, so we'd have a free afternoon. I had considered going to the technical museum yesterday, but the time was too short, so we planned for it today. It might not have been the best choice for the kids, as Tammy and Emmy had a long awaited trip with their kindergarten today. It was going to be canceled if it rains, but even though it had rained and everything was wet, they went ahead and went on their trip.
That trip meant changing up our routine and getting up an hour earlier, as they already had to be at kindergarten at 8 am. Normally they get there at 9:15 am. And so Randy left with them just before 7:30 am, and since Sammy was eager to get going, the two of us left at 8 am. It had been a while since I took Sammy to kindergarten. He got there just before 8:15, then I returned home.
I still had some time until my 10 am student and was very tired, so I lay back down for a little bit. Then I went downstairs to teach. It was nice not to have the noise in the background. When I finished just before noon, I went to the kitchen to make a quick lunch. Randy and I ate, then Randy left to pick up Tammy and Emmy. A few minutes later I left to pick up Sammy. Randy usually picks him up at 12:30. I got there at about 12:45, which was still too early to meet up with Randy and the other kids, but I figured Sammy was already waiting for me being used to the earlier time. And I was right. He was standing in the door, his coat on, held up by his teacher. He was really happy to see me. He went into his wheelchair, and off we went.
We got on the subway and went downtown, then we got on another subway that we rode only for one stop. We had so much time that we only got on new subways. We reached our meeting point with the rest of the family at 1 am. I called Randy, and they had only just left kindergarten and were walking to the subway that would bring them to us. And so Sammy and I had half an hour sitting on the subway platform and waiting for them. I had been smart to bring his tablet, so he could watch children's songs while waiting, which made time go by faster.
At 1:30 Randy and the kids arrived. Tammy and Emmy immediately started telling me about their trip, how they went into the woods and looked at bugs and collected sticks and played there.
We got on the next new train and rode it for a while. After we got off, we had quite a long walk yet to conquer. Unfortunately the elevator was on the opposite end of the platform, so we had to walk all the way there, and walk it all back again once on street level. And then we still had a long walk ahead of us. The kids were whining as they had already walked a lot today during their trip. But we eventually made it to the museum of technology. I had already bought our tickets online, so they checked them and we walked in. The nice lady at the entrance gave me a map of the museum and told us where the elevators were.
The first thing we saw walking in was a slide. Tammy and Emmy ran up the stairs to slide down. Then we noticed that it showed how fast the kids were. However, it always took a few seconds to display, so the times on my pictures are the ones from the previous child sliding down. They made a competition out of it, and Emmy was faster than his sister.
Then we headed to the elevator and went one level up, where the kids' play area for ages 1.5 to 5 was. We had reserved spots for 3 pm, but we still had 20 minutes until then. And so we walked around the exhibition. There were lots of big and heavy machines and old trains, and also lots of hands-on stuff. The kids got on a spinning plate, and some teenagers a few meters away turned a wheel making them go round and around. There was a room about steam engines, and inside they had full wall videos explaining the history of the steam engines. Back outside, there was something like a hometrainer where you had to move the petals, but the kids were still too small for that. And Emmy pulled his sister up on this machine. Then they found a coal oven of an old train, where they could put (plastic) coal on a shovel and throw it into the oven of the train. The coal fell back to the bottom, where they could pick it up with the shovel again. They were having fun, but it was not that easy to keep the coal on the shovel. Randy and Sammy then joined us there, and Daddy did a good job of shoveling.
3 pm was approaching, so we headed back to the kids' room, showed our tickets and got in. They had a big slide in there as well as a fire truck, a small boat and a reading corner with books. The kids went down the slide ride away, then Emmy headed to the truck. That was also what Sammy was interested in. They enjoyed sitting at the big wheel of the truck. They also went inside the boat. Tammy wanted to play with those round things of different colors that you can stack. She took them all the way to the other end of the room, where I was sitting in the reading corner, and started laying them out there. Then she stacked them and stood on them. I started putting them on my head, one after another, trying to let go and balance them, and I managed all 6 briefly.
At 3:40 pm our time was up, and we were all kicked out of the room. We had a reservation for the kids' area for 3 to 8 year-olds at 4 pm, so we had 20 minutes to look around the maim museum. We headed to the media area to explore it. They had a stage there with a screen and a touchscreen, where you could take selfies with different backgrounds and pick karaoke songs. I found one I knew and turned it on. I sang some of it, then gave the mic to Sammy who also sang a little bit.
There was not much more to explore there, and we headed to the kids' area for our 4 pm time slot. It was multiple times bigger than the first kids' area, and there was lots to explore. They had created some inclines with interesting stuff on it and had a tunnel leading into it, so you could be under and behind it. The kids slid down where it was like a slide a few times, but Emmy did so on his feet, so he'd slide better. Sammy started off at this board, where you could put glass cones of different colors into the different holes. But then he found his favorite. They had a table with a hole in the middle and whenever you pushed the button, air was coming out of it, pushing the ball or fabric or whatever was on top high into the air. Sammy stayed there a long time, as he was having so much fun.
The other two discovered the openings along the wall, where you could put a ball or fabric into those holes, and a strong current of air pushed it through the pipes hanging down from the ceiling until they'd come out at the other end. They had so much fun with it that they did it for the longest time, experimenting with different things to send through.
At 4:40 pm we were told to leave, as our time was up. We'd seen and done enough, so we were heading in the direction of the exit. We had to walk through their shop, where they had this ball with lightning inside. The kids could touch the ball, making the lightning go to their hands. When I touched Tammy, I got a slight electric shock - twice. We then left the museum to start our long walk back to the subway.
All the kids were tired, and they were whining about the long walk. But I figured out how to challenge them, and suddenly they were running, and so was I. The three of us took the stairs down to the subway, while Randy and Sammy walked the long detour to the elevator on the other end of the platform. We then got on the next subway train. Tammy and Emmy sat with me, and Emmy fell asleep on my lap. When we got off to go to another subway line, I carried him, but not for long, as he's just too heavy now. I put him down and wondered whether he'd only pretended to be asleep to be carried.
We took the second subway and got home at 6 pm. It was time to make their dinner. They ate, then we changed things up. Instead of putting all three into the bathtub together, Sammy went in first, and I fed him the rest of his food there. He got out, and Tammy went in next, and again, I fed her the rest of her food. When she got out, Emmy went in, and he was fed as well. This may be the way we do it from now on.
I prayed for Sammy and put him to bed. Normally Tammy and Emmy want me to read them a story, but their new friends' books had arrived, and they wanted to fill out the first pages that were about them. And so we sat down and did it together. Tammy had been given a book by her best friend in kindergarten to fill two pages out about herself, and of course she then wanted her own book. All that writing took so much time that we couldn't do a story, but for once they didn't mind. I prayed for them, put them to bed, and went to my desk to get ready for my 8:10 pm student. I taught until 9 pm, then got something to eat. I started working on the pictures, but I didn't get far. The pictures and the report just had to wait until next day.
