Posts filed under ‘Stories’
Ok – you’ve got me there…
This morning, my children are pretending that they’re in Narnia. Middle Daughter is pretending that she’s Susan, and she’s created a bow and arrow made of sticks (her gift from Father Christmas). Youngest Daughter is Jadis, the White Witch, and she’s using a baton as her magic wand.
The problem with this is that they’re running around and chasing each other with sharp, pointy objects.
After several admonitions to stop pointing these things at each other, I said…
There won’t be any more warnings. If you point something at your sister, it will be taken away from you.
Youngest Daughter promptly started pointing her fingers as magic wands.
Sigh.
Ok. You win.
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Today’s homeschool stories
Today, I arrived home to a meal prepared in the style of the Plymouth pilgrims by Oldest Daughter. As the father, I had been moved to the head of the table, which was a bit jarring, since I’m a creature of habit. Ordinary Spouse sat beside me, and the children had to sit “below the salt”. So we were all in the “proper” order.
Oldest Daughter prepared a menu and small rule book so that we’d know what to expect. The meal consisted of:
- Succotash stew
- Bannock cakes
- Whole, baked squash stuffed with apples
- Bearberry jelly
- Hot nuts (walnuts and almonds)
- Flat bread “plates”
And our rules included:
- Do use a clean knife to get salt.
- Do use your hand instead of a fork.
- Don’t scratch itches.
- Don’t dip your food in the salt.
- Don’t get your own food. (This is for children.)
There was a little verse to help the children remember the rules:
Put not thy fingers in the dish,
Neither in flesh, neither in fish.
Put not thy meat into the salt,
Into the cellar, that is a fault.
But lay it fairly thee before,
Upon thy trencher, that is good lore.- The Little Children’s Little Book
We had the hot nuts for dessert. I found a Valentine nut…
Valentine Walnut says, “I love you.”
And now that supper is finished Middle Daughter and Ordinary Spouse are reading about Babylon, Hammurabi, and his code – not because MD didn’t finish her schoolwork today, but because she wanted to do some more.
That’s the news from the Rainbow House of Learning for today. Now I have to go clean up the succotash stew. I wonder if the Pilgrim fathers would have done that…?
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Cambodia, part 7 – The road to Siem Reap
After acclimating to a new climate and time zone for two days in Phnom Penh, our family (extended family – ten of us!) was up early on Sunday, November 20th, for a four-day excursion to Siem Reap.
Ten years ago when Ordinary Spouse and I visited Cambodia, there were essentially two ways of going between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in a timely fashion: airplane or boat on the Tonlé Sap. We had the “privilege” of experiencing both of them.
How times have changed!
Now there is a good road (National Highway 6) that connects the two cities. Granted, it may still be slower than either boat or plane. However, it is a significantly faster land route than it was a decade ago, requiring only a portion of a day, rather than multiple days.
So – by 9 a.m. we had piled into our van and had set out on the 323 km journey.
Here are some pictures and a video of the countryside, taken as we were driving. Nothing special – just examples of the scenery on Highway 6…
Mid-morning, we stopped at a rest area, and the girls had their first experience with “squatty potties”. It wasn’t altogether positive, although it should be noted that things improved (“Attitudes, not facilities,” says Ordinary Spouse!) over the course of our vacation. The Guest Complacent also visited some vendors to purchase an assortment of snack food for us, while my daughters struck up conversations with some local girls (who spoke English quite well, thanks to their interactions with tourists). According to Oldest Daughter,
They ask where you come from if they can tell that you aren’t Cambodian. They were commentiong on how tall I was for being 9 years old. They said I was pretty, too. They wanted the grownups to buy their products, too. They were asking who was my aunt and who was my mother and who were my sisters.
Food vendors at the rest area
What constitutes snack food in Cambodia? Well, there was pineapple, sticky rice, sugar cane, and this fried delicacy that Ordinary Spouse is trying…
“That picture is a bit too fuzzy,” you say. “What is it that she’s eating?”
I’m sorry for the blurriness. Let me see if I can find a better one. Ah, yes – here’s one…
Fried bugs. Mostly crickets. Some grasshoppers. Maybe some other random things.
Yes – I did try them. I started out with the biggest grasshopper that I could find. I’m ashamed to say that I gagged on it, but only because some wings caught me off guard. The second one – a cricket – went down much better. It tasted ok. Really, there wasn’t anything disagreeable about it. They mostly just taste fried. But they’re high in protein.
And for the record, here is the sticky rice…
We stopped in at the Arunras Hotel and Restaurant in Kampong Thom for lunch.
I don’t have much to say about lunch. The Guests Complacent chose a nice selection of Khmer food for us, as they often did. However, there is one significant thing that sticks in my mind…
One of the dishes that we ate was Morning Glory. In my opinioin, it was ok – not bad, not outstanding. We ate it frequently throughout the trip. But it was new; and it was a cooked, leafy vegetable; and that made it a potentially challenging food for my daughters. However, Oldest Daughter put on a brave face and tried it. And apparently she liked it. And this seemed to set the stage for the entire trip. There weren’t any foods that she didn’t try. There weren’t any activities that she shied away from. She got nervous about some things, but she didn’t let her nervousness stop her.
The week after we returned from Cambodia, Oldest Daughter turned ten-years-old. When I look back at the trip – and perhaps in the future when I look back at her life – that lunch will stick in my mind as a symbol of her maturity – a coming of age moment. I was really proud of her. What a great way to end her first decade and start her next one!
Oldest Daughter has Morning Glory for lunch. She doesn’t look excited, but she’s still jet-lagged.
From Kampong Thom, we had a few more uneventful hours of travel to get to Siem Reap. And my next story will pick up there…
Coming up: Central Boutique Angkor Hotel
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Five for Friday… belated Halloween things
I’m a bit late for Halloween, but now I have an excuse for a “Five for Friday”. Without further ado, here are five Halloween tidbits.
1) Our Jack O’ Lantern!
This guy got a nasty cold at just the wrong time. Scary.
2) A memory of Halloweens gone by…
When I was young, Dad and I rigged up lights and a sound system in the bushes outside our front door. When trick-or-treaters would venture up the walk toward our house, we’d flash the lights and make spooky noises. It was always gratifying when they turned around and ran off.
3) This year’s costumes
Here are three of us before we went trick-or-treating this year:
Oldest Daughter was a cat; Youngest Daughter was a fairy (you can’t see her wings); and I was a mad scientist (I actually performed acid-base reactions). Middle Daughter (on the steps in the background) was a blue jay.
4) Favorite candy
If you really want to give me a treat, get me a bar of Organic Panama Extra Dark Chocolate. Fair trade, 80% cocoa, 100% yumminess.
5) A hilarious clip from “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”
“I got a rock.”
Stories of the day
Here are a few stories featuring Youngest Daughter…
At breakfast, we overheard her gearing up for today:
I need something to do. I need to find an action word!
Later, while I was still at the table with Pandora playing on my laptop, Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” came on. It was very cute when YD grabbed her harmonica and joined in.
The Rainbow House of Learning is getting ready for another year of school. Today, one of our friends hosted a party for a bunch of homeschoolers. It was a “Not-Back-To-School” party. And YD declared to Ordinary Spouse:
I want to learn how to read!
OS found the easiest book in our house. So tonight, instead of listening to her bedtime story, YD read to me.
And finally, I wanted to share a picture of supper tonight. Because it was awesome. And Ordinary Spouse is awesome.
She served homemade spinach and cilantro falafel with pita bread and a mint yogurt. Additional tomatoes and cilantro are on the side. The recipe was based on one from Green Kitchen Stories. I’m guessing I had one of the best meals in town.
And we have leftovers.
Where do vans go when they die?
Our 2002 van has been slowly fading. We intend to keep driving as long as possible, but fear is slowly growing… What if it decides to die on one of our long road trips?
At first, the rear hatch started falling apart. One day when I tried to close it, I pulled the inside handle off. Then the rear window wiper failed. I think it broke trying to deal with the mud from a country road a few years ago.
Then the automatic doors ceased to be automatic. They’d close, decide something (or someone?!?) was trapped in the door, and open themselves up again. Or not. Sometimes they just stopped wherever they were. We figured that the weather stripping was in the way, so we finally just removed part of it.
The fans for the heater and AC are acting weird. In the back, one has completely stopped. In the front, we sometimes have to change the fan speed to get the temperature setting to change from hot to cold and vice versa.
And the CD player is dead – has been dead for about a year now. Unfortunately, it died with six CDs inside. And then, all of sudden, in a last gasp about a week ago, it heaved the CDs out, right before the entire stereo system started power cycling itself every few minutes.
Blech.
And that is when we found out where vans go when they die…
Playing Pictionary
This is for those of you who like cute stories about children…
Last evening, Ordinary Mommy and the girls decided to play “Pictionary”. First, here are some fun drawings:
Can you guess what the drawings are?
