Monday, February 14, 2011

The Hoppity Hop Came to Life

Once there was a hoppity hop. But he wasn't a hoppity hop horse, he was a hoppity hop dog. The little owner didn't know that when she was gone her little hoppity hop would come to life.

One morning the little owner whose name was Jarrah went shopping with her mother. Her big sister whose name was Amelie stayed at home because she didn't want to go. While Amelie was cooking, the hoppity hop started to come to life. The hoppity hop did not know that Amelie could hear and didn't know that Amelie was there. So when Amelie heard jumping and laughing she came to look. She thought it was the hoppity hop. Was she right? When she saw, she was right. She knew. Because she saw. Then she told the hoppity hop to stop jumping and laughing. He went still again but he was not just still - he was dead just like a hoppity hop that is dead. But he could come to life again.

So when Jarrah got home with her mother and all the groceries, Amelie told Jarrah that the hoppity hop came to life when she was gone, but Jarrah didn't believe it. So Amelie told her that when she was big enough and stayed home like Amelie did, she would get to hear the hoppity hop jumping and bumping into the wall and laughing with glee.

The End.
By Amelie.


Hapy Hapy
Can you wrap me
Up in paper tawell
Put me in the naughty
And watch me growl and howl
By Amelie
December 2010

Sunday, February 13, 2011

To Thailand and Back Again

One of the highlights of the year so far has been a trip Chiang Mai this last month. Chiang Mai is very special to us. The first place Ben and I met. We were attending ADRA training at the Empress Hotel (we spent a total of six months in this hotel) starting in September 1996 - my that is almost 15 year ago! Well, there was a conference hosted by the Asia Education Resource Consortium (AERC) that is group that supports homeschooling / education needs for missionaries in Asia. And it was to be held at the Empress. So, I convinced Ben that yes, this would be fun (not hard to convince him). We decided to do the travel on the cheap so instead of paying $275 each to get to CM we drove our car to Siem Reap (maybe $30 in fuel), caught a taxi to the border with Thailand ($22 each way), a bus from the border to Bangkok ($18 each way), and the night train to Chiang Mai ($80), we flew Air Asia back to ($113) and the back back to the border and taxi back to Siem Reap and drove home after fixing a flat tyre on our car! That is a total of $383 (not sure if my mental arithmetic is right) instead of $1000 - not a bad saving for an extra day of travel. The kids enjoyed the train trip mostly. There was a cute little dog on the train...
...which kept them happily occupied for much of the trip. He even had a nappy on which Jarrah was quite tickled by since she was having to wear one also. And no, they didn't come close to falling out of the train - even though some of these shots may look like that.


The conference was for 3 days - 3 and a half but we missed the first half day thanks to the slow train. They had great speakers. They had worship speakers and speakers on family leadership, and on starting to read and on social studies, and how to get a debtless degree. On anxiety in children and on literature and and on Bilingualism. For bilingualism, the main message was that it really is best for kids if they can learn both languages from birth but if that doesn't happen, that it really is important to get a good grounding in your mother tongue academically (called cognitive academic language proficiency or CALP) before you start into a second language as the main medium of study. I believe we are doing OK with Amelie. She most likely missed picking up the two languages concurrently but she is improving fast now. There was a really good speaker on finding your roots. Apparently this is hard for some of us since we never ever seem to settle down. You probably will never get all your stuff all in one place. You can't ever get all the people you love in one place. What is one to do? How do you raise children to have a sense of home when you are always moving?? Luckily for us we aren't always moving. We have been here for a very long time. But still, where is home?

Well, my alloted time for this post has ended (Jarrah's nap time - she has woken up). Kids are all over the house being chased by the peacock. I have an attack peacock right now as well as an attack squirrel. By the way, Ben has given me permission to threaten the squirrel with a stick when he enters "my" territory. He has been behaving.

To be continued.