The Undomestic Goddess was perfect for the two flights home from New York City, when I was sick and tired and worried about the weather and just wanted something easy and entertaining to read.
Sense and Sensibility is my favorite novel by Jane Austen, so I was excited to go to an outdoor theater production of it at Burnby Hall Gardens just down the road from us. I told the kids that I'd take anyone who read the book first. Nobody was very interested except for Lillian, who immediately started it. She was about a quarter of the way through it when we saw the play and she's busy finishing it now. It'll be her first time reading a Jane Austen novel. (Insert gleeful clapping here!) Left to right: servant girl (also played Fanny Dashwood and Mrs. Palmer); Margaret (Lucy Steele); Willoughby (Mr. Palmer); Marianne; Eleanor; Mrs. Dashwood (Mrs. Jennings). In this production, all of the actors played multiple parts except those who played Eleanor and Marianne. I love seeing actors take on multiple roles in a production. It's fun to see how they highlight the differences between the characters. Since the play was performed outside, many people brought picn...
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 ...
We took a train from Rome to Ancona, Italy, where we had a one-day stop. Ancona is about ¾ of the way up the east coast, on the Adriatic Sea. The next evening we planned to take an overnight ferry to Split, Croatia, so this seemed like a simple transfer place, but Ancona is a really neat city itself! At night I wandered around and ended up hiking to a functioning lighthouse. The stone sign is at 104 meters above sea level, about 341 feet. Our neighborhood had some nice murals / graffiti: Here is a view out over a pentagonal building formerly used as a quarantine colony, a little island right by the city, open to the public: There are quite a few drinking fountains scattered all over, and all the ones we tried worked! This is the correct way for a city to be. It is very hilly, with stairs and steep roads all over. Many narrow little alleys between buildings, and connecting passages and staircases up and down hills, between houses, churches, and pa...
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