I must be settling down, since I haven't written in a while. I will start with A and S's back to school nights. A, being in middle school, has no real class (homeroom is merely administrative), and his back to school night was a miniature school day, with eight minutes with each teacher (20 with the math teacher, since he has maths every day). It was very interring and informative, and we finally got to understand what FACS (one of his electives) is - it Family and consumer science, or as I once knew it, home economics. This semester the emphasis will be on cooking, so that should be fun. I wonder what he will learn to cook. I've sent Mummy the English syllabus, which she thought was very impressive, and in general the teachers here appear to do a huge amount of grading, which all goes online and can viewed by anxious parents. In US history, A is learning about the War of Independence, and so is S - is this a characteristic of relatively new countries? I don't remember repeating any historical period at school in Israel, except for the Second Temple.
S, on the other hand, studies mostly with his homeroom teacher. He has maths with another fifth-grade class, which is going slightly faster, and starts every day with a "special" - music, art, science lab, PE, library. He is working very hard on spelling and reading: there is a weekly spelling quiz, with daily activities to prepare, and he has to keep a reading log so as to read 25 books by the end of the year. His class is also making use of Chromebooks, but it's not clear to me how, except as a substitute for paper books (according to his teacher dictionary activities are suddenly much more popular).
We had a quieter weekend, not going very far. Saturday was cold and rainy - rainier than we thought, actually, and we regretted not taking umbrellas or raincoats. S and ADC started the day by going to get S's MMR vaccination done, and then we went to the National Gallery of Art in downtown DC. We saw only part of the museum, of course, and were very impressed by it. We went to a special exhibition on Degas and Mary Cassatt, which was fascinating. I found Degas' Little Dancer statue, which is part of the permanent exhibition, rather creepy after I looked at the media used: in addition to wax and wood, it includes leather, linen and hair! The anterooms before the restrooms are hung with details of male and female portraits, respectively, from the collection. I was surprised, once I saw that there were Renoir ladies bathing in the collection, that none of them had been used. Perhaps the fact that they are nudes took them out of the running?
On Sunday we had brunch with our next door neighbours, T and ST. ST is a senior spokesperson for the World Food Programme, and T works for the federal courts, preparing continuing education courses on human rights for federal judges. ST also wrote a biography of Mary Wickes, a character actress best known as the nurse in Now, Voyager, and their house - which is about ten years' younger and quite a bit bigger than ours - is full of 50s and 60s memorabilia. They were very amused by S's interest in super heroes!
After brunch, we went shopping. First to the weekly farmer's market for fruit and vegetables, and then to the "Sidewalk Sale", where various boutiques put things out for sale on tables in front of the shops. Sadly, it turns out that there is no local yarn store here. I had to order yarn from Amazon to get it quickly; I am making a sleep cocoon for D and G's baby, M. We actually didn't buy anything in the sale, but got odds and ends from the hardware store, and a new game, called Seven Wonders, from the game shop. We came home and played it after a snack, and decided that it had been a good choice. It has elements in common both with Puerto Rico and with Citadels, both of which we enjoy.
On Monday I went to Baltimore to attend the history department's seminar for the first time. I went by public transport again, and it was a much smoother experience. A number of people told me that I was making the right decision, actually. I had luck with KM and he showed me around the campus, so I feel much better oriented. The library is very pleasant, but after looking at the Islamic/Middle East studies holdings I didn't have time to explore the History of Medicine holdings in depth. The seminar itself was extraordinary. The topic was completely unfamiliar to me, "Thinking with Rome: Space, Place & Emotion in the Making of a World Religion”, presented by Simon Ditchfield of the University of York, and basically he was talking about representations of Rome by pilgrims writing for a non-Roman audience, on the one hand, and the export of icons and relics from Rome to churches mainly in the New World, on the other. There was a pre-circulated paper, and after about 10 minutes of presentation, people started asking questions. This was not like any departmental seminar I've ever been to before, not even in Cambridge: there was almost full attendance by the faculty, and the assumption was that everyone had engaged with the material in advance, and the speaker had to be prepared to defend his position and improve his argument.
Last but not least, today ADC got his Maryland license. This took him most of the afternoon, with a vision test, theory test, and practical test - and standing in line in about 5 different queues. All of that was after spending yesterday afternoon taking a Drug and Alcohol Awareness course, without which one cannot even take the driving test. I can understand why they want teenagers to take that, seeing as you can get a license some seven years before you can buy a beer, but it seems ridiculous that someone like ADC should need to do so. I myself am procrastinating and getting a bit of driving in before taking the test. The practical involves parallel parking before they even allow you on the open road, and that worries me a bit. So far the driving itself has been OK - I got slightly lost this morning, misunderstanding the GPS, but it quickly set me right. This is a lot less stressful at 11 a.m. by myself than it can be on the weekend with everyone in the car ...
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