Thursdays are for science and technology! These kids… they have such an easy time with mobile phones, laptops and video games, and then struggle with the concept of needing electricity to power everything around us. It’s like we are going backwards some days.
After we tidy up breakfast, the girls hop onto their laptops for the tvolearn.com section of their workloads for the day, then they pack those away and switch to their Grade 1 and Grade 5 Great Canadian Curriculum books. They do a section of the day’s subject, and then another section of alternately English or math, depending on what they did the day before.
Once school is over for the day, they get to play until lunch time. Absolutely, we could be doing their schooling in many other ways, but we are not here to sit on computers or workbooks for hours every day. We are here to explore and learn from doing, seeing, tasting, experiencing.
For example, for the last four weeks, they’ve been demolishing one of the next door factory buildings. It is so loud that sometimes, the whole house shakes! They’ve been going at it since mid October, so by now, there’s not much left. What you see in the below picture, is the very far back of the property. Because everything is covered by the grey plastic, we don’t actually see any of it, and the gate to the road is always closed, except for the one time the girls and I went to 7Eleven for ice cream, and we got to see the big gaping empty space where a factory once stood. This building was looking old and abandoned when we arrived, with what looked like a baseball sized hole in one of the windows, so I guess it had been empty for a while.
There aren’t a whole lot of animals walking around here, and it’s something I miss about Canada. There are a few birds, but we haven’t seen squirrels or any other wild animals out and about, and we’re always giddy when we catch a glimpse of a dog being walked here and there. And the dogs are more or less ALL the same SIZE! The pet stores only sell puppies, so it’s hard to tell from there, but all dogs (except for two beautiful Bernese Mountain Dogs we’ve met) are shorter than my knees. So imagine the girls’ squeals of joy when they caught this cat in the sun on the roof this morning, watching the commotion that is the construction (or should I say destruction) site!
Lunch came and went, Joe and Téa went to the grocery store, while Maylin and I stayed home and read for a bit. We’ve gotten into a habit of having a snack in the afternoons while we’re out and about, so when we’re home we snack on whatever we have in the AirBnb. Today’s snack for Joe and I was a bottle of sweet potato latte that I had picked up at the grocery store, thinking it looked interesting. Definitely not as tasty as I hoped, but a different type of snack nonetheless!
Joe made an early dinner, and then he took the girls to bouldering so I could write for a bit. Notice how all my blog posts suddenly got headlines? Easier to find posts if you want to go back to a certain place or topic!
On their way back home from bouldering, Joe also picked a pack of these things up for me:
Our day today wasn’t all that interesting, considering I didn’t leave the house once, and Joe went as far as the grocery store and bouldering class, all sights and destinations I’ve shared with you before.
BUT! I took so many pictures on Monday when we went to the aquarium, I figured I could share some of the outtakes with you today. They were all in the running for getting into the main aquarium post, but didn’t quite make the cut…
I’ll leave you with an evening shot from Namba Parks from last week. They have this fake grass knoll area on the roof, in fact 7 floors have a roof garden as part of their “park” portion. You can walk from the 2nd floor to the 8th floor on top of the building! This is from the 7th floor, where Maylin laid down and called her sister and her dad over to come look at the stars with her. It might only have lasted a minute or two, but I caught it on camera, so I’ll always remember.
I solemnly swear to leave the house tomorrow, so I can show you something new and exciting!