Too funny--the way to get comments is to post an empty message! (For my blog,
anyway, four comments is a lot, and that's what I got for the last
"message"!)
Yes, we arrived here safely and happily and at the time planned. (Can't
really count being about an hour late, when the whole journey was about 24
hours!) We like it VERY much here, except for Jacob getting a bit too much sun
on Friday and now having a huge blister on one shoulder, and the fact that the
internet connection is sporadic at best. I actually wrote a rather long post
under the last title, but when nearly finished, all the computers suddenly shut
off, and it was gone...I was surprised when I logged on just now to find that
the title had survived, though! LOL
We went to the beach last Saturday (a little silly--we'd walked down the day
before, but not to swim, and it was totally empty, and on Saturday it was of
course very crowded) and went to a national park on Friday and swam in a lake
that was very brown with minerals. Other than that, the most exciting thing for
the children and me is that we got library cards last week--all four children
got their own, as each child may only take out 6 books--and we foresee many
trips to the library while we're here. (It's a five-minute walk if Katie (2
1/2) walks, faster if she's in the sling/carry cloth.) Lots of people have said
that the library is "so small", and I suppose it is, but compared to the
half-shelf of books in English at our library at home, it seems huge and we're
quite satisfied that we won't run out before we leave in April! (But we might
have read most of the books by then, so it won't be SO hard leaving,
either.)
My husband's first week of lectures went well, mostly orientation and
"cleaning-your-slate" stuff, the first speaker will be this coming week. I'm
registered to take part, but they're still working on finding childcare for us,
or for the two little ones, anyway. Someone had agreed yesterday to do it, then
called this morning to say she woke up with the flu...
In the meantime, we're all enjoying the community living--no shopping,
cooking, cleaning up! Heaven! :-) And the food is WAY too good, and peanut
butter and GOOD bread are available at all times for when they do serve
something someone doesn't like. The children love having all these people
around, always someone to play with, and Katie knows the names of a lot more
people than I do. (And a lot more people know her name than know mine--we walk
down the hall and people I don't remember having ever seen are calling out "Hi,
Katie!" and in the last couple of days, several people came to me and kind of
embarrassedly asked my name, saying they knew Katie, but realized they didn't
know my name. It's been fun. :-) )
Jacob (8) has made friends with the handyman and spent last week helping him
fix windows, and Jacob can't wait until he comes back, but he's only here three
days a week. Officially school-work-wise, the children have been doing German
and math and we're reading a book about South Africa together, and I've ordered
a couple of children's books set in South Africa that should arrive next week,
but most of their/our time is spent interacting with each other and other
people. Several days ago I was chatting with a group of people, including one
girl (from the U.S.) who was homeschooled through 10th grade, a few South
Africans, and several Dutch people (none of whom had any idea that homeschooling
was legal in the Netherlands), and the big S-word came up: What About
Socialization? The girl who had been homeschooled and I first started to laugh,
at that moment Lukas (5) runs through the room being chased by an 18-year-old,
Jacob is helping the handyman, and Katie is chatting with someone else (an
adult) nearby about airplanes. (Marie (10), was admittedly probably reading
somewhere...) I finally just said, "Well, as you can see, my children are very
shy and wary of interacting with strange people in new situations..." No more
comments were made on the subject. LOL
I'd probably better wrap this up before something happens to it. I haven't
been able to access my e-mail today (internet connection may be sporadic, but
connecting to AOL is even less reliable...), so for those who know me and would
normally write to me privately, I'm not ignoring you, just can't get into my
e-mail very often! Oh, and the time difference to Germany is one hour (we're
ahead), and we're ten hours ahead of the west coast of the U.S.
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