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.
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! ...
What a fun book to read. We read this for book club and then watched the movie (which wasn't necessary since we've all seen it so many times we were quoting the whole thing). It is better to know from the beginning that Goldman wrote it all, there is no S. Morgenstern. You feel less duped. I thought it was really obvious that Goldman is the true author (his humor is the same throughout, there's no way the language is from the era Goldman claims it is from), but, I do remember thinking it really was an abridgment when I read it in high school or junior high. And a lot of the ladies at book club didn't know the whole thing is fake either. Some decided they didn't like the book just because they felt deceived by the author. It is so funny though. And you get all this background information about Inigo, Fezzik and Buttercup. I love the way he tries to place the book in time... "This was before Europe," then later he talks about Paris. Also, when he describes...
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...
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