Preparing to move to Cyprus

Last week we redecorated the front room in our house in Birmingham:

Although that's mostly completed, we're still working out what to leave for the people who will be living in our house, what to take with us, and what to pack away.

As we're trying to do the same in every room, there's muddle almost everywhere. There's a family from Australia coming to live here in January for a year or 18 months: they are going to be working at a Church whose building is very near to us, so that Church is going to look after the house for us as well. But it has been a rush trying to finish all the decorating we should really have done years ago.

The boys are enjoying this half-term at school, but are also looking forward to going to Cyprus, although I think it will be difficult when we actually say goodbye. We understand there are plenty of music teachers there - Daniel is particularly keen to carry on with his clarinet, piano and various recorders. We’re taking text books and curriculum details etc from their school so I can teach them at home (other than music!) to start with, while we spend some time looking at the various schools available. 

It seems to be easier to start schools in either January or even next September and we didn’t want to throw them straight into new schools without having seen them, and settled in ourselves. Daniel was rather unhappy in his American school. In retrospect, I wish I had taught him at home there.

Daniel is growing fast. He is still about six inches shorter than me but his shoe size is bigger, and it won’t be long before he can look down at me. He continues to do well at school, mostly self-motivated and always eager to look beyond what he is taught. He sometimes gets bored in the classroom when the teacher has to back-track for other children who might not have understood so well. While he’ll need a secondary school when he’s old enough, I think he’ll benefit from some schooling on his own for a while. 

His main interest at school is music. He took Grade 3 clarinet in the summer, and got a good mark despite panicking over some wrong notes. He’s still doing well with piano and took an unofficial grade 2 theory exam in the summer, which he passed with distinction. I gather it’s unusual for children to be so good at music theory, but he really enjoys it. Tim still loves singing and is also playing piano, and teaching himself a bit of guitar.

Richard has been spending a lot of time preparing for his work in Cyprus and around the Middle East. He’ll be involved in the video/media aspect. He’s always wanted to get back into television or video, and this is a good opportunity for him. No doubt he will still help people to get their computers set up and working, as he seems to have a talent in that area too. But he has no formal training, and he often gets frustrated spending hour after hour fighting technical problems with computers.

I’ve been doing some freelance writing, and finally had my first article published, with another promised for the New Year (in Parentwise - a magazine for parents of teenagers). I spent most of the summer re-writing a teachers’ course for computers, which we began about a year ago; it’s now being published by the boys’ school PTA. It’s being professionally printed and advertised to all the primary schools in the country. It’s mainly being marketed as a loose-leaf course which schools can copy and distribute to teachers, and there’s already been some interest in it.