September 13th. Green Thames

Yesterday Thames river turned green. Some green algae must have grown or was brought up by the river. It also looks like the flow of the river has slowed down somewhat. Swans had been feasting on the greenery the whole day.

We had uneventful last couple of days. It has been raining every day pretty much most of the day. But it is not cold, so it is not so bad. It is just we cannot ride our bikes and it is kind of quiet when we get out in the evenings for a walk. Next week we will have to plan more interesting evening activities. We got Georgia taken care of somewhat in terms of extra-curricular activities for one afternoon during the week - she will be taking Judo for an hour after school. If nothing else, we will probably do a lot of reading this fall.


The sail had reached our window

This Wednesday we went to see Snail and Whale play at the Rose Theater. Beautiful production just like Aliens love Underpants last time. It is remarkable how they were able to extend and interpret a pretty small children's book. The show lasted an hour. We noticed that in the surrounding towns there are other theaters, with some even specializing in children's shows. Tickets are around 9-12 pounds. We could see a different children's play each week. Of course we would have to drive to see the other ones.


Tomorrow we are going to Warsaw for a weekend. We got 50 pound round trip tickets about a month ago. We are planning for more trips like this one if we can find similar fare and can manage a trip to the airport some 100 miles away :)

Getting more acquainted with schools here. As I may have written before, Georgia has "numeracy," "literacy," "worship," and lots of PE. I attended parent-teacher conference and got the feeling that school will not be particularly straining. For math, they are looking to work on addition/subtraction and will start looking at the multiplication tables. On the reading front, the kids are starting chapter books and expecting 1/2 page read per day. Maybe they are starting the kids out slowly. Means more fun stuff at home.


The baby is all grown up

In Isabella's school, they talked about Humpy-Dumpty for two days and followed up with omelet cooking demonstration. This is nice. They did comment on her broken English twice. It is pretty natural for her to lose some of that over the summer. The kid had no exposure for several months. You don't hear English even at playgrounds here. But her teacher's feedback sounds all to familiar to the stuff we heard in US daycares and schools about Georgia in the past. Just to be sure that they don't think she is developmentally challenged, I relay every morning to her teachers what she shared about the prior day.

On the eating front, because we are going to be away for a few days, we've started to work through our stock of dumplings from the Korean supermarket.  I'd say they are right in the middle between the koldunai from Papa Karlo and khinkali. If they were bigger, they would be khinkali!! I have to look for some Georgia's restaurants around :)

And since I've started with the colors, cannot resist sharing this one, sent to me by Yana. Sheer brilliance. Sorry about proximity with food!