July-August 2019

TRAVELS

In July we travelled to Canada, and also west to Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

On our first trip we visited Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. We loved the town. The lakefront has a beautiful park by the river. We took a boat tour which we enjoyed very much, and also found informative about this part of the world and its historical challenges. We also visited a trading fort whose dimensions amazed us all. The food was better and cheaper than the US, but the gas was higher. On this trip I learned two things: 1) even if your travels prevent you from checking in your hotel on the first date of your itinerary, you need to call the hotel or you risk your booking being cancelled, and 2) not all border crossings with Canada are opened 24 hours. So when traveling plan ahead.

We also visited Duluth and Bemidji in Minnesota. Both are charming gems hidden far far away from anything huge. The kids were for two weeks at a language camp in MN. They want to go back again.

Our trip west was to Glacier NP and Yellowstone. Glacier is an amazing place and everyone should see it multiple times. Yellowstone is huge but so are the crowds, which robs from the serenity I look forward to in such trips. We camped at the St.Mary KOA on the west side of Glacier and we found it to be a great starting place for many key destinations in the park, mainly anything west of Logan Pass, Two Medicine and Many Glacier. The visitor center at St.Mary is fantastic. The boat tour is not so great. Landing in Kalispell was a challenge for B, but landing in Idaho Falls was perfectly fine. Go visit Glacier, it is amazing. We loved all hikes we did- Avalanche Lake, Hidden Lake, St.Mary and Virginia Falls, Grenell Lake, and Iceberg Lake. AtYellowstone we loved Mystic Falls, we did the entire loop starting from the left heading directly to the falls along the flat path; climbing the falls and descending from there to the parking lot was a bit strenuous. We did not like Fairy Falls because it was too crowded. We also did not like Beaver Ponds because it was not an interesting hike, but we loved that the hike begins in one state, stays for a while in another state, before going back to the first state - basically we were in Wyoming and Idaho during the hike. In Yellowstone we loved Lamar Valley because there were so many animals to observe and listen to. We also spent a day at West Yellowstone in the Bear and Wolf Center which offers a two-day admission, with unlimited comings and goings. The town was a ghost town in the middle of the day which was a lovely observation to make.

READINGS

Me: Surviving Hitler, Animal Farm
S: Red scarf girl, Tangerine
B: Usborne: Life of Napoleon, and Who was Napoleon; Nick and Tesla-Solar Powered
PG: Vovo de no Pe

Read Aloud: We need to finish Narnia and Two Miserable Presidents. At the moment we are cutting through with Usborne's short book on Alexander the Great.


SCHOOL

We are a day away from school starting. We are not ready. Our sleeping schedules are off. We are also mentally not there given the thrill of our travels. I am not ready. Fourth grader is returning full time, if things are not working out with him, I will try to pull him out as a part-time student. Sixth grader is a floater at the moment. She is very dedicated to her instruments and with the unnecessary intensity and stress of school she may be conflicted, so I am leaning towards homeschooling full-time, but we will try to get her to attend part-time for Science, Social Science and English. The rules they have are crazy in these schools. Taking a kid from school for a trip is full of hurdles, but after that the kid itself has to go through loops to make up all the missed stuff. They have made it too complicated, way too early. Give kids a break, you are not making them Nobel laureates at 11. She wants to play basketball and play in the orchestra, but who, in their right mind, would ever ask kids to play music at 7am? Kids should be sleeping at 7am, and school should not be rolling until at least 8:30am. Middle schoolers need a lot of sleep. My middle schooler sleeps all the time because her body is changing by the minute. Administrators seam to forget that they were kids once going through the same metamorphosis. It is really puzzling what collective human stupidity looks like. Also optimizing as is done is wrong - they kill all creativity and hunger to learn, and to be curious; they create robots and this is shameful. I wish I had understood the fallacy of the "excellent school".