Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Dashes


Before school started, I flew over to the States for my grandmother's 90th birthday and a whirlwind weekend in NYC. My battery did not last through the trip, but I did take a few hundred or so pictures, and particularly liked the two that top the collage. They just looked so New York to me.

The pictures on the bottom row stand as my Czech contrast. The first is the front of Hotel Pariz, downtown, and the second is a picture from way back in September on Caroline's first day of second grade.

She's having fun this semester, thanks in part to being back in her old classroom with her old teacher and all of her friends from first grade. Theoretically, that means she can concentrate on other, more important, bits of school. An interview with C about what those bits might be goes something like this:

Interested Parent: Learn anything new today?
C: Ummmm, nope.
IP: Nothing at all? How did Math go?*
C: Hm...I can't remember. Oh, I know! I learned how to boil rice in a bag today, so we don't have to steam it any more!**

* Every now and again we like to tax our brains with the odd problems in Caroline's 2nd grade math work book. The hardest are so cleverly illogical they've stumped even the professor in the family for a good ten minutes.

** C thinks we're crazy to eat sticky rice from a rice steamer and keeps trying to tempt me with tales from the cafeteria of goopy Czech rice covered in sauce. I may have to send her to South Carolina for some rice habilitation!