Mimi has her two orientation days at the end of this week and begins school at The Wonder Center from 8-2 on the 24th of August. We are so excited she has the opportunity to experience an amazing bi-lingual experience at a location so close to home. Here are some snapshots my friend Jenny took at Mimi’s last day of school in June. Thanks Jenny, I know it was hard work for you with the children climbing all over you, not to mention the temptation of all of those cakes!!!
Meanwhile it was Hannah’s first day in Grade 4 today; also the first day of work with the students for Simon and I, it is great to have kids back in the classroom and see what you are in for for the rest of the year. It looks like my class are going to get along famously but the thrill I get from seeing how happy Hannah is in her new class is so exciting… She has a new teacher, Ms Lau and I think her year is going to be her best yet. Check out what Hannah is up to on her teacher’s class blog.
We are in the South now, by a tiny little beach area called Vale de Centianes. We are eating lots of sardines and drinking red wine, eating sorbet and gelati and swimming swimming swimming. Today Han and I woke at 10, then we ate, we swam, we watched Get Smart, the soccer, swam, ate, swam and that was about it. Life is lovely here in the south of Portugal! Mimi is loving the pool, swimming naked and running around naked and even sleeping naked… we are all pretty much naked (much to Hannah’s dismay!)
Tomorrow we head here for some fun in the sun, Hannah and Simon style!
We’ve been to Spain, briefly to Barcelona in 1996…We’ve had four visits to France since then and consider Paris to be one of the most amazing cities in the world and we pretty much have an ongoing love affair with the south of the country, but this is our first trip to Portugal.
The Lisbon streets have more graffiti than perhaps any other city we’ve ever visited, we have trouble with communicating as we don’t know any Portuguese and the kids are going a little ‘stir-crazy’ in our small local apartment…BUT it is official WE LOVE PORTUGAL!
The sky is so blue, the air is so pure, all of the buildings have so much character and did I mention the food? Holy Mama, so delicious!
Yes Yes I know, sorry Aussies but really have to say Center not Centre when that is the name of the actual place!!! We are so lucky that I used to teach Izzy Leary and therefore met her Mum Sue who started this place back in March. The Wonder Center is only two blocks from our house and ayi enjoys taking Mimi around there in the morning and bringing her home in time for her to enjoy lunch. Once school starts back in August Mimi will not only make her snack everyday, (the tortillas she made yesterday were amazing) but she will also make her lunch; sometimes using the ingredients from the garden she has grown with the help of the compost she has collected! I love it!
I had been feeling a fair bit of the old ‘mother guilt’ that I was now the only family member who hasn’t spent time there so I took the day off work yesterday and I am so glad I did. I was able to just go with the flow and get a really good look at all of the activities I have heard Mimi talking about for the last ten weeks. I always knew Early Childhood Workers had a tough job but wow, they just never stop, those little kids just really suck the life out of you with their contagious energy and thirst for knowledge.
Mimi moved from activity to activity so smoothly and knew what to expect every step of the way.
If you are unfamiliar with the Reggio Emilia Approach in Early Education you might want to read this article to find out more, Sue does an amazing job of never speaking down to the children and “The learning menu is highly diversified, ranging from dancing, coloring, painting, shaping clay, discovering one’s shadow, role playing and a whole host of stimulating experiences, such as helping one another, sharing a game, making friends and analyzing how things works so the child can find an appropriate comfort zone, which would allow optimum levels of expressions.”
It certainly eased some of the guilt seeing we have made the right decision to send Mimi along to a place where she is happy and safe as well as nurtured and loved.
Well, we have reached mid-May, and you know what that means?
We are 26 sleeps away from June 12th when we take off for Portugal, Finland and Sweden for 7 weeks of Summer, hooray!
There is a lot to accomplish in that time and friends to farewell however the general feeling in the air is a buzz and excitement over long summer days at the beach, playgrounds, sorbet and amazing European tapas and fresh seafood. We will be spending time with Raija, Jussi, Matias and Johannes in their new apartment in Helsinki as well as their Summer cottage that we were so fortunate to enjoy last year; we are very excited about returning there and about seeing Hannah’s friend Johannes that she went to school with for years in Shanghai.
Speaking of friends from Shanghai, as I sit typing this, Hannah is by my side on Simon’s laptop writing her own blog post on the new blog that has been created for her and her best friend Sydney to communicate to the world about their travel experiences, book reviews and whatever else takes their fancy. Their blog is the culmination of a five year friendship that has seen them visiting with each other in Thailand, America, nearly Abu Dhabi and this Christmas, Australia. They have written letters, skyped and e mailed and as parents we see www.overhereoverthere.com as a great way for the two of them to continue their relationship and encourage each other with their writing, reading and technology skills.
May has seen Mimi in the second month of her schooling at The Wonder Center. We are so impressed with the work that Sue, her teacher, is celebrating there and feel very fortunate to have this sort of opportunity for Mimi just around the corner. She currently attends 5 days a week from 8.30 – 12.00 and come August this will increase for another couple of hours each day with her making and eating her own lunch there. So far she has cooked her own peanut butter, bread and muffins and has a lovely time each morning with the close-knit group of ten students aged a year younger and older than she is. If you are family or just a fan of cute Mimi… click on the link to photo pages and you will see what amazing facilities this place has and why we are feeling so fortunate, it is an early childhood centre’s dream come true.
Enjoy some of our photos and please take some time to check out Sydney and Hannah’s blog one of these days. It is a very exciting project for them and for their parents.
This is the best fun ever ever ever. Over the Christmas holidays back in 2008 we stayed at Miranda and Andrews a fair bit and one fine day Andrew woke up and decided to make a water-slide and Simon decided to make a movie about the making of a water-slide. I don’t know who had more fun, the grown ups or the kids, well actually, yes I do, it was the grown ups for sure!
As always, wait for the video to load for maximum viewing pleasure and be sure to leave a positive and friendly comment to encourage Andrew for his next big project… surely a go-kart track is needed at Donald Land???
After checking out Sharon’s blog and hearing about Photo Peach this week from Amy, I thought I’d check it out while I lay here bedridden after eating something shocking in the last 24 hours…
I found it pretty slow to upload photos from iphoto and wasn’t really sure how effective it would be… the photos are nothing amazing, I was just experimenting so next time I will choose more wisely, as for the wording…again, just having fun although this is something I think I will enjoy about photo peach in the future…
See, I told you I would enjoy the wording aspect…still bedridden, still learning…but broadening my horizons a little…
Happy Birthday Mimi… Know we know what it is like to have a daughter born around Christmas and New Years…
We got back from Thailand after two weeks of holidays, opening Christmas presents, celebrating and then it is time to celebrate all over again…. ahhh, commiserations to all of you born in the weeks around that busy time of year! It kind of sucks!
I’m having a bit of trouble with flickr right now and my tech assistant is away in Harbin… so here are the photos the old fashioned way… Please click here.
