Now I've finally read all of Jane Austen's completed novels. I thought Northanger Abbey was delightful. And I just discovered that there's a BBC production. Yay!
did you hear about "Sundays with Jane"? Starting Jan 18, 2008 every Sunday night, every Austen novel will be on Masterpiece theater. 2008 will be a good year!
No, I didn't know about that, but I did notice on amazon.com that those Masterpiece Theater productions are going to be available, presumably after they air. We don't have TV, so I'll have to get them some other way. Funny how I'm never tired of seeing new versions of Jane Austen's novels. It's always fun to see someone else's take.
Actually, Ivy has recorded the new Masterpiece Theater versions and I'll be able to watch them in a few weeks when I go to her house to watch her kids for a week. Yay! I'm excited to see them. Ivy said they've been good.
Home Schooling Dream vs. Reality Our initial home schooling dream had the kids studying Latin and Greek, speaking German fluently, finished with Calculus and starting college courses by the time they were 14, and running their own successful business selling artisan cheese made from the milk of our goat herd. Also, they would never watch TV or play video games. Then the kids were born. It turns out that, in the interest of maintaining my sanity, I’m more of a Relaxed Home Schooler. This is also why I’m a Relaxed Housekeeper. We didn’t even teach the kids German, which both Jon and I speak fluently, although I maintain that the main reason for this is not laziness but our reluctance to give up our secret language. The kids are on track to do Calculus before they start college at or near 18. We never got the goats, although we have plans to get some when we return to the US, and we did have chickens for a long time. The chickens laid eggs for us, but we didn’t sell them. We just ...
Today I'm feeling a little better. I still wanted to take it easy, but get out a little, so I went with Zed, Phin, and Seth to the southeast of Prague, the Háje stop on the red / C Metro train, to an area called Jižní Město , the "south town". It is a panelák sídliště, a panel-concrete apartment building settlement, which we knew as a Neubaugebiet in former East Germany. The part of Prague we're living in now is older, so it doesn't have any buildings like that, and I wanted to show this to the boys and see how things look. Apparently this kind of settlement is generally called a microdistrict in the former east bloc. (There is lots of interesting history and nice photos in those Wikipedia articles I just linked to!) Here is some of what we saw. Note all the festive colors they've added which really make the buildings nice to look at! Note the terrifying hallway/bridge at the top between the two buildings in this next one! ...
It's been interesting learning to balance Vacation Life with Regular Life. Normally when you visit a place, you're there for only a short time, so you pack in as much stuff as possible. For us, that means visiting historical sights and museums, walking miles and miles around a city, eating out, etc. Our Vacation Life speed is actually pretty relaxed, as we've learned that with our large family, it's better to lower expectations than to push ourselves too hard and end up exhausted, cranky, and ready to kill each other. I'm a big fan of lowering expectations! But even with our comparatively relaxed Vacation Speed, we still get tired and it can be quite expensive. It's not a sustainable way to live for more than a few days at a time. So for our Home School Field Trip, we balance the Travel/Sight-Seeing/Culture Days with days of Regular Life. Gittin' history at Scarborough Castle: Until fairly recently, a Regular Life day consisted of the kids doing sch...
did you hear about "Sundays with Jane"? Starting Jan 18, 2008 every Sunday night, every Austen novel will be on Masterpiece theater. 2008 will be a good year!
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't know about that, but I did notice on amazon.com that those Masterpiece Theater productions are going to be available, presumably after they air. We don't have TV, so I'll have to get them some other way. Funny how I'm never tired of seeing new versions of Jane Austen's novels. It's always fun to see someone else's take.
ReplyDeleteif you want you can watch 16 episodes on YouTube, someone uploaded the new version. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey was phenomenal.
ReplyDeleteActually, Ivy has recorded the new Masterpiece Theater versions and I'll be able to watch them in a few weeks when I go to her house to watch her kids for a week. Yay! I'm excited to see them. Ivy said they've been good.
ReplyDelete