Our first visitor is here - B, ADC's post-doc - and I am taking advantage of their being at a Phylopizza evening to write sooner rather than my usual later. For those of you who are planning to visit us, B reports that the bed is very comfortable.
We set off on Friday after lunch for North Carolina, to visit our friend SG, who teaches at Duke and lives in Durham with his wife and two small children. Having been warned of Friday rush hour traffic, we took the boys out of school early, and left the house about 15 minutes after our planned departure time (having discovered that S had mislaid - terminally, it appears - his raincoat and trying to find it), around quarter to two. Google Maps and Waze had earlier informed us that the drive should take about five and a half hours. We arrived at our destination at 9 p.m., having had the choice of bumper to bumper traffic jams or thunderstorms and pouring rain in the dark the entire way. It took us over two hours to get to Fredericksburg, the next sizeable town south of DC (and still considered commuting distance), including a section where Waze took us off the I-95 and onto country lanes where we had no idea where we were going. Did I mention that it rained all the way? After three and a half hours, we still had not reached Richmond, and I took over from ADC. I have never driven in such severe conditions in my life (I can hear you laughing, J. I would much preferred to have been in Cyprus with you!) - it seemed as if we were sliding along, we were going so slowly and the road was so slick. Much to my relief, ADC got back behind the wheel before the thunderstorm reached us - but he was totally out of it by the time we reached SG. Fortunately, the boys were unusually well-behaved for such a long car trip. The fact that we were on main roads and A could play on his phone probably helped a lot.
We spent Saturday recuperating, basically. After a late breakfast, SG and IG took the two children, YG and MG, in different directions for their Saturday morning activities, and we went for a walk around the local lake. It was incredibly humid and very warm - I wore a short skirt and didn't need any base layer. The lake was very pleasant, and the neighbourhood was classic suburbia, with no pavements, and two cars in every driveway. We had lunch in the sukkah, and not a moment too soon - shortly after we finished it began raining again. ADC and SG spent the afternoon cooking for supper, when we met another Israeli expat family, that of SK, who had also been part of ADC's D&D group way back when, and who had been on the executive committee of the graduate students' union together with me. The children played together - mostly S with YG (who is in second grade), and A with MG (who is three). I made a lot of progress on LR's shrug.
Following S's recent announcement that he was now much happier at school because he had "found the geeky kids", a great deal of the conversation involved the question of the difference between geeks and nerds. Considering the fact that there were four PhDs present, it is not surprising that geeks were declared to be Good Thing to be, but as A pointed out, there is very little that is geekier than debating what makes a geek ...
On Sunday, it was cool and drizzly - not quite English weather, it was less cool and the drizzle was heavier, but enough for us to decide that we would not do anything special on the way home, but simply leave after lunch and hope not to be caught in traffic again. We spent a couple of hours at the lovely Sarah P. Duke Botanical Gardens, while IG taught Hebrew to children (including her own ones) at the JCC, and then met up again for an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. As we had learned the night before that SK lived in a town where the children played cricket, rather than baseball, this seemed a safe bet, and it was. S outdid himself by eating six pieces of Tandoori chicken, while A was more adventurous and ate gulab jamun for dessert. We had an uneventful trip back, which indeed took the advertised five hours, so that we arrived home in a much calmer state of mind.
SG gave us a number of AA guides to the mid-Atlantic and southern states, so we are now better placed to plan our winter break. I think that driving all the way to New Orleans is not realistic, and a lot will also depend on the actual conditions in December.
Yesterday was Columbus Day, and lots of people had the day off work (a possible explanation for the traffic conditions to and from Durham). A and S had school, though, and not just an ordinary day - it was Open Day, and parents could come to class! I started with A, whose school day begins earlier, and attended US history, science and maths. In history, they practiced analysing evidence, using visual and written sources about "the event in Boston on March 5 1770" (commonly referred to as The Boston Massacre, in which 5 people were killed - but of course that is an interpretation in itself). As this was the first lesson of the day, time was given to the school TV station, Wake Up Takoma, and the Pledge of Allegiance was recited. I stood up, of course, but didn't quite know what to do - obviously I couldn't say it, and even putting my hand on my heart without saying anything seemed inappropriate. I eventually settled for crossing my arms, and had a bit of a flashback to assembly at Boston Primary School in South Africa, where everyone knew the words to Our Father except me.
In science, experiments involving air pressure were conducted at six stations, and now I finally understood why A had had to bring an empty soft drink can (we actually brought an empty beer can all the way from North Carolina) - some water in the can was heated over a hot plate, and then the can was quickly flipped into a bucket of ice water. If you were quick enough and hit the water at the right able, the can would implode. I enjoyed that lesson. I also enjoyed maths, because it turned out that I remember much more about linear functions, solving equations and deriving equations from story sums than I thought I did. All those extra lessons in high school were worth while, I guess. As I came into the maths classroom, a boy in A' group asked me if I was British like A, to which I felt that the only possible reply was "Even more so." When I took S to have his haircut on Thursday, the hairdresser - who is Portuguese - identified my accent as being "not British", but almost everyone else here thinks that I am.
I spent less time at Sl's open house, because that only ran until 11:30, the third-grade recess. I attended science and maths classes again. S's class is learning about motion, and they did an experiment involving measuring how far a container of sand could be propelled by a large rubber band placed around the back legs of a chair. As this meant lying on the classroom floor, I am sure that everyone had a lot of fun. In maths, S is in a different group, which is moving through the material faster, and they are currently learning decimals. We played a game where everyone had to say the decimals in full - not "two point five six" for 2.56, but "two and fifty-six hundredths". I didn't go to social science, but we received a note from S' teacher saying that they were going to start learning about the French and Indian War - the subject of A's most recent quiz in US history, as you may remember. I also had to miss seeing Conflakes, the teacher's pet corn snake, eat Lunch (a mouse), which apparently was a very exciting event - "one of the coolest things I saw in my life," S assured me.
If anyone wants scans of quizzes/worksheets/assignments that the boys have got back, just let me know. Also, for the ladies - I have been shopping online quite successfully, and now have several skirts and two pairs of boots to wear. I can send links to the precise items if anyone is interested.
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