Category Archives: family and friends

Julia’s Thoughts on School, Part 1

Mom: Julia, tell me something that you liked about school this week.

Julia: The best part of school was jump roping at recess. Sometimes they try translating the jump roping songs into English. I know one of them. It goes “Sister, sister, open and close your legs. Touch the sky, touch the ground. Hop one time and jump out.”

Mom: Is there a part of school you don’t like?

Julia: All the teachers talk in Spanish. But yesterday I figured out how to do math in Spanish. The numbers are the same.

TV alternatives

 



 

That storm we had last week did a lot of local damage, including taking out the cable for the TV for most of the town. You may know we’ve ranted against TV in our lives for a long time now. It’s addictive junk that turns your brain to mush. Though we did crowd around our friends’ set when the Red Sox were playing, and I have been known to watch marathon sessions of Iron Chef (did anyone see the rabbit episode a few weeks ago?!)

 

TV here had the mixed blessing of (mostly) being in Spanish, so as the kids were watching cartoons you could almost justify it being subliminally educational, in a linguistic sense. But, easy come, easy go. In TV’s absence, the kids spend more time hanging upside down. Which is subliminally educational, in a gravitational sense.

First Day of School


Finalmente, the children begin school! Because of the 5-day-long holiday surrounding Easter, today was the first day of school for Eric and Julia. They are enrolled at Colegio Patris, a nearby private, Catholic, bilingual school. They were quite anxious when I dropped them off this morning, though bribes of mid-week-dessert and after-school-shopping sweetened the deal. Bilingual education in Argentina means 1/2 day of English and 1/2 day in Spanish, so their morning classes are delivered exclusively in English (English language, social studies, something in science I think) and afternoon (Spanish language/literature, math, science?) is in Spanish. They managed to fudge their way through the “Catholic” bits of school, such as crossing yourself (at dinner tonight Chris taught them the good ol’ mnemonic for spectacles-testicles-wallet-watch to remember the correct sequence) and mumbling some prayers (they might have been mumbling even if they knew the words in Spanish). I’ll have them give their impressions in a few days, after the trauma has worn off a bit. Here are some pics from the end-of-day flag ceremony and them in their uniforms with their lunch boxes.

Easter Sunday in Argentina




We started the day with a (paper) egg hunt in our yard then journeyed into the big city (Buenos Aires, about an hour northwest of here) for lunch (pizza and empanadas, admittedly not the traditional Easter meal in this Catholic country) and exploring parks filled with enormous trees.

Guest 1 and Guest 2


Chris and I both come from families full of intrepid and frequent travelers. So it’s common to have relatives and friends find us when we’re abroad, and they’re always welcome. My step-father, Fred Schroeder, has been in Uruguay and Argentina for several weeks already, combining a business trip with some vacation time, so we’re happy to have him claim “first visitor” status.

 

 

But only by a few hours! Priscilla Minotti and I have been friends since the early 1990s when we were fellow geography graduate students at Oregon State University, and we’ve been able to reconnect multiple times over the years. She was integral in setting up our first stay in Argentina (Argentina I, in 2003). Last night we began brainstorming how to rejuvenate our dormant research project from Parque Nacional El Palmar, the focus of my National Science Foundation Research Fellowship five years ago.