Celebrity is as Celebrity Does.

100% Appropos of Nothing.

But I DO love a good pun. Or a bad one.

Three Things I saw in Washington, DC today.

Guess which one gave me the biggest thrill....seriously. Victor Sifuentes?!! Just my rotten luck that a) I spotted him in a building filled with cops and "no picture" signs, and 2) no one in my family wanted to stalk him until he exited the building. Sigh.

Big Brother is Watching You...

...not that he'll be able to do anything about it if you're doing anything crazy...

...because it's a FAKE man!

When I'm Hungry...

I gotta admit...Chinese food has grown on me. I was never hugely into Chinese in the States--I ate it once in awhile and liked it enough, but I didn't crave it. Most of the Chinese food we eat in the US is derived more from the Cantonese regions. Beijing food is heavier, more meat, less rice, more oil, more noodles. And don't get me started on bullfrogs, fungus, lungs, and whatever else pops up on the menu. But there are a few dishes...


The Golden Tripod has a strange name but delish food. It's way down near Tiananmen so we don't get there too often. You always have to take a number because it's so crowded and we're always the only whities there. We never have any idea what the guy with the microphone is shouting out so every time he says something we send Cameron up to find out if it's our turn. The main floor is lined with fish tanks where you can choose your dinner and people sit and pit sunflower seeds all over the floor. We always get a private room (great because of the noise).


Not everything that's cooked in these babies is good, but I think my odds are definitely improved. Bao zi (steamed buns) and jiao zi (dumplings which I usually prefer pan fried) are so so good. Look at these...so nice on the outside...


So much better on the inside! These are shrimp and chive. No soy sauce in China for dipping--that's vinegar and there's nothing better for a tasty bao zi.







Who'd've thought celery would be a craving food? This is--lightly fried in oil with lily bulbs, it's light and fresh and crispy and sweet and OMG I'm raving over celery, but there it is.



These bad boys are a bit too spicy for me. We usually have another order of noodles that come with fermented bean sauce (don't even get me started on good that is or how strange it is to think that I just wrote that I love fermented bean sauce) and then mix the noodles together. When you see that oily red color on your food, order more beer because baby, it's gonna be HOT.

Bon appetit!

What the Kids Do...

They used to paddle in the pool...

Now they play ultimate games of "Drip Drip Drop."

They used to whistle down the trail...

Now they rock the 400 meters...

Then they get back to dissecting pig hearts.

They used to wear lizards on their heads...

Now they take unfortunate tanning advice from Lindsay Lohan--

but stop halfway through when they come to their senses.


Worst--and best--of all...they grow up.

Stop that!

Dear Chinese people who leave comments on my blog,

If you can read the blog, then you should leave comments in English. Because, you see, I can't read Chinese. So I don't know what you're saying. Are you being complimentary? Are you insulting me? Inviting me to view naked pictures or buy performance-enhancing medicines? See, I just can't tell so I have to delete them. And I'm just way too busy to spend time doing that and writing these posts.

So, I'll say it just once...

停止，现在！

Thank you.

The Cultural Benefits of Living Overseas

When you live overseas, everyone tells you how lucky you are. What wonderful experiences you are having. How great it is for your kids to be exposed to the rest of the world. I remember when I knew that leaving the States was the right thing. We had accepted the job to go to Tanzania, but couldn't tell anyone because it might have jeopardized Mark's job which was possibly on the budget cuts list. We were at baseball practice and another family was standing in front of us with their 4th grade son. "Yeah, I was offered the chance to go to London for 2 years to open the new division," he was saying. "But I said no. I mean, it would have been good and all, but Scotty here, he'd miss two baseball seasons." Two baseball seasons?! Are you kidding me?! Here I was, getting ready to drag my family to one of the poorest countries in the world because of a job with an organization run by a group of people that had never done anything like this before. This guy decided not to live in London freaking England for a couple years, very probably with all expenses covered during that time, because his 10 year old played baseball?! Yeah, it was time to get a different perspective on life and the world.

Those people are right, of course. No, not the baseball dad--the people that say we're lucky. We chose to take a leap that many people can't, or won't, do. I guess there's something different about this very traditional suburban family. Yes, lots of the big living expenses are paid for. Yes, we do see great things. Yes, we have had enough experiences to check a good many things off our "bucket lists."

There is another side, though, and it''s those things that I often feel I can't talk or complain about because I'll look ungrateful. Or, whatever I say would be considered un-PC. Or, whatever I say is glossed over with another round of "oh, but look at what you get to experience!" My friend Andalucy packed her family off to Spain this year. They and their children are fluent Spanish-speakers and I have loved reading about her family's experiences. Her children have struggled at their local school there and while she was trying to decide what to do she asked for advice. A number of people commented that the cultural benefits would outweigh the struggles. Personally, I can't imagine working for 8 hours at a job that I hated, that made me feel miserable, just because I got to work with that country's nationals. Living can give you all the culture you need. On those days when you are at odds with seemingly every. single. aspect of your life, you can't imagine how much you long for the familiar. So, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, or un-PC, there are some things that are not that great.

My kids are growing up away from their extended family. We already lived far away from them when we moved and we're spread out enough that it's hard to get together. They are losing connections with cousin and aunts and uncles. They experience tremendous loss when they move and when their friends leave. Every move reminds them that their future is uncertain, too. They don't know where they'll be in 3 years. That may be liberating for us as adults, not so much for them. Every trip home reminds them of things they miss about the States.

I miss my friends deeply. I have never made friends easily--it took me almost 15 years of living in Minnesota to find my two dearest friends. Living in a transient community is so difficult for me. I'm lonely a lot, even though we have people we socialize with. Those feelings are much stronger overseas than they were in the States.

Most of my days are filled with work, but every day brings challenges. There really are very few areas in my life where things just flow. You adjust and often everything goes great, but then something small sets you off and you realize that you're carrying a load of stress or edginess or whatever about livinglife away from the familiar. You realize how much of your home country and culture you bring with you and how that puts you out of place where you are.

A friend from Tanzania and her family moved to Dhaka in Bangledesh this year. They have had a tough adjustment from rural Canada and Tanzania to the urban poverty and crush of Dhaka. This week she posted about sitting in traffic sobbing--it took over an hour to go 1 kilometer (that's half a mile, folks) and how the entire time beggars knocked on her window and called to her. That's a cultural experience that I don't think a lot of people think about when they think about living overseas.

My DVD player broke. It's the 3rd one that's broken since we lived here. If you can get it fixed, we would have no idea where to go and there would be no assurance that it would get fixed anyway. We'd have to find someone to give up their own time to come with us to translate. I hate just junking stuff but I was fed up so I left the house at 9:30 this morning to drive 9 km to the electronics store. It took 1 hour to drive there. One hour to drive less than 5 miles, although in the "glass half full" world I was doing better than my friend in Dhaka. I walked into the store, pointed to the DVD player I wanted and pulled out the cash. One thing about China, they do not care that you don't speak Chinese and have the remarkable ability to ignore the 5 or 10 times I remind them (in Chinese) of that fact. Anyway, the drill is--you pick out what you want, then run the pretty typical gamut of being talked into something different. No, I don't want that DVD. Yes, the one I want does play DVDs from all over the world, I already have another one just like it. Yes, I do want a fapiao (receipt). Yes, I know I have to pay full price if I want a fapiao. No, I really do not want that other one. Confession: the only reason I want the one I want is because I have another one just like it so I've mastered the Chinese remote and so I know what every button labelled in Chinese does as well as all the Chinese stuff on the screen that I have to wade through when something isn't working. No, I haven't actually learned how to read any of it--I just have the different paths memorized to reset stuff.

Finally, it's done. You're going to buy the DVD. Now is the time for paperwork. There is the time it takes to enter my name and phone number into the computer--time because it's hard for them to work with our alphabet (as it would be for me to enter anything in Chinese). Then you wait for something to print out. Then you go to the other side of the store to stand in line to pay. Then you go back to the salesguy and show him the receipt. Then he prints the fapiao (the "official" receipt). Then he goes to some mystery room to retrieve it and get it back. So....from the time I pointed to the DVD player and took out my wallet to the time I walked out the door...55 minutes. I must have been in a spectacularly craptastical bad mood, because it took EVERY.SINGLE.FIBER of my to not go postal over the young guys (the one that was helping me and the 15 that watched) at the store. The truth, though--this was not a particularly horrific experience. This is what life is like here. Overseas. Having cultural experiences.

I am not ungrateful. Really, I'm not. I am living a life I never at any point in my life imagined. We are blessed beyond reason. It just that sometimes...just like life anywhere, it's hard. Hard in ways that I feel guilty about mentioning. But now I have.

Do You Know Your American History?

My 4th grade classes have been working on a migration unit. For their final assessment they had to select a guiding question and then develop a plan of research. Two boys (neither of whom are American) chose the guiding question "Why do people move?" and chose the subject of pioneers moving west in the US.

A few disclaimers:

*A lot of the grammar/verb tense irregularities are very typical for this age as so many kids are bilingual or trilingual in our school.

*This was their first draft--however, they were quite disappointed at our (teacher) response...


People move because of bad weather and robbers. Less trees global warming. And they had troubles light lightings and buffalos charging into their wagons wheels falling off of their wagons their horses ran away sometimes the horses also can get hurt and injured. What they had to bring food,medicine, weapons, powder and sugar and coffee (such as rifles) and sometimes there are Indians stopping you so you will have to pay the money!

If there was bad weather and it would rain and the people will have to use an umbrella and block the rain drops. The pilgrims will have to shoot the buffalos a lot of times to kill it and the Indians had arrows and one shot will kill it buffalos are hard to kill. The Indians made spears and bows and arrows and tubes where you could put a spike inside and it will poison the enemies. The pilgrims had rifles and knifes. Every night there will be a guard to guard the camp and if he fell asleep he would get spanked and hurt. If there were no camp fire wood you could use buffalo poohs. Sometimes they would have bugs go inside their food. Sometimes there won’t be space for you to sit the people would sell their house because they had to move away quickly and buy supplies for the journey. The journeys are very difficult. The people who move on the prairies go to places called forts where they can buy supplies if they run out of them. If you get stuck on the prairie or get lost in one, you should wait until another cart or traveler comes and travels with you. If your animal pulls your cart collapse or dies, you should bandage the wound with part of your shirt to stop the wound from getting infected. Some animals needs lots of care and drinks. If you run out give most of your water you have left to your animals.


Impressive--they managed to work in global warming and references to African bushmen. Not to mention corporal abuse and umbrellas! When we were done giggling, we handed it back and strongly suggested they read the books instead of just looking at pictures and filling in the gaps. The second attempt was much better, although it did tend to focus mainly on the tremendous dangers of river crossings for some reason.


By the way, I am all for reforming the educational system, but I better not have my merit pay judged by this...

The Greatest Show on Earth.

Somehow in the birthday/spring break madness, I forgot Ava's big show. There are a lot of things about our school here that I'm not crazy about, but there are some things that are really fantastic, where it all comes together in the best way. Our 2nd graders study balance and motion in science and work during their gym and music classes on circus acts involving balance and motion. The activities seem simple, but are fundamentally important in physical development. They perform for the whole elementary school and then again in the evening for families. As adults we forget how nervewracking something that like is--they were all so nervous and everyone was brilliant. Really--every. single. person. was a star. Whether they spun plates or balanced feathers or jumped rope or walked on stilts...every child was so proud of their accomplishments and so proud to perform. And in a school where everything seems to revolve around academics, this is an important opportunity for kids to turn it on.

The beginning of the show was a Rube Goldberg-esque human alarm clark to wake up the teachers and start the show. Ava jumped onto a mini-tramp and onto a pyramid as her part. She was one of the featured cartwheelers and spun a plate on a stick. Her big moment, though, was walking on a roller. Each class is assigned a skill to practice and this wasn't easy, especially since it wasn't something that she could practice at home. She loved being able to do it with her friend Cora!

'Tis the Season...

With traveling, I missed Palm Sunday and now I'm realizing that Easter is this weekend. I don't go all overboard with flowers and bunny crafts and stuff like that at all, but I do like to do a few of those things. Also, I think it's important to spend time talking about the meaning of Easter (obviously). Now that we attend a non-denominational church, one that doesn't pay much attention to the church calendar that other Protestant churches do, I realize how much I rely on those calendar times (Lent, Pentacost, Advent, etc.) and how changes in the appearance of the church and the service direct your attention and focus to those times. Last Easter Sunday I was so disappointed at church because nothing was different. No Easter hymns--just the same praise and worship music we had on all the other days. I was definitely let down and did not feel the same sense of joy that I usually feel at church on that day.

Given all of that, when I saw this painting at the Louvre last week, I felt something, but I'm not sure it was joy and wonder. No, that's not true. I did wonder.

*I wondered who this Jesus was.

*I wondered why he was so muscular and why his head was so tiny.

*I wondered by his feet look like he's been wearing flip flops all his life. (see how his big toe is further away from the others?)

*I wondered why he looks like he's walking on a tight rope.

*I wondered what those other two women are whispering about. Maybe they, like I, are wondering how that cloth is staying magically fixed on his hip.

*I wondered why he's carrying a shovel. Did he have to dig his way out of the tomb?

*I wonder if I'm being too irreverent. I mean, I'm talking about a picture of Jesus, not the actual person. But still...

*I wonder what it says about me that I wondered these things. I'll be the first to admit I know very little about art and I understand that knowing more would greatly enhance my ability to understand and appreciate what I see. I also admit that I'm not super interested in doing that--you know, knowing more. The result being--I stand in a breathtaking museum, surrounded by priceless works of art, and wonder why WJHHS (Why Jesus has a shovel).

Because it really was all about Noah.

Any of you who know Noah know that he is a whole lotta boy in a wiry package. He is perpetually in motion-- always acting out some inner movie (of which he appears to be the star and is always in mortal danger) and seems really generally unaware of the world around him. Life comes at him and while he picks up a lot when you think he's not paying attention, it turns out he was. When we got to the Louvre we went to the Mona Lisa right away to avoid the crowds and he was ready to leave after his 30 seconds were done. We did stay for over 3 hours, though! Talking to him generally revolves around talking about what he's reading--right now it's castles and weapons and story ideas he has. This week was great for us--we often knock heads and this was 10 days of plenty of opportunities to do that and it went so smoothly. It's rare for a middle child to have so much time with a parent by himself and he really enjoyed that, I think.

Sharpened stick in castle ruins = potential vampire threat.

This shot is called "The Big Lie." Noah was spectacularly uninterested in any of the churches.

Someone needs to stay away from carbs--hard to do in France when one is addicted.

We have very few photos of Noah just...being. As in still, and facing the camera, and still. Any picture where that happens is a gem. I was lucky enough to get 2-3 on this trip.
They're my favorites.

Get Ready for SERIOUS Book Envy, People.

Look at what I was reading this afternoon. No, really look at it. As in, click on it and blow up the picture. Do you see what it is? Do you see who wrote it? It's only the very first English dictionary, written by Samuel Johnson, first printing in 1786. It's only 1 of 5 remaining copies. IN. THE. WORLD. And, as I am typing this, it's sitting not 10 feet from me. Just sitting on an ordinary desk under an ordinary lamp covered by an ordinary cloth. No musty archives, or white gloves. Just a book.

I spent an hour reading just the preface and it was fascinating. How much has language changed in the past 230 years? Yet his sections on grammar and orthography are spot on today. What we've been learning from Melvyn this week--it's all right there. What the hell have we been doing all this time?

Quote of the day, appropos perhaps, in light of the health care debate: "Change is inconvenient, whether it is for the better or for the worse."

So if reading the dicitionary is nerdy, then make me a T-shirt and print me a certificate. I'm loud and proud to be a member of that club.

Dreaming (because nothing's open right now).

Before we moved to Tanzania, I made a list of things I'd want if I lived overseas. I wanted to live in a small town (or at least one that had a small-town feel). I wanted warm weather. I wanted English to not be the primary language. I wanted whatever language that was spoken to be written with the same alphabet we use in English. I wanted a place where my kids could go to good schools in English (given that we don't speak another language). I wanted a place that was politically stable.

Minneapolis was a great great place to live and if we had never left, I would never have regretted raising my family there. It's not a small town, but it is a small city for being a pretty major national player and I think it does have a small town feeling to it. But I never. ever. liked the weather.

Arusha fit the bill. The weather in Arusha was absolutely perfect. Seriously. I learned the language and would have gotten better had I stayed on. It was diverse--something I didn't know that I would appreciate so much.

Beijing...well, let's just say it's not those things. So they don't speak English, but turns out that's not making up for the other junk. Turns out pollution is much higher on my radar than it used to be.

Cluis...OK, seriously, I'm not moving to France. Yet. My kids really can't go to a French school and the thing about having jobs and making money seems to be a sticking point at this time in our lives. But should that stop a person from looking?

The kids can't go to school until they are academically fluent in French so it's going to be homeschooling. Sadly, however, we will need to work. Using my amazing powers of French and deduction, I believe the sign in the upper right window says "for rent." Using my amazing bargianing powers, honed in developing countries, I will get that flower shop below for a song. Since the flowers already come looking very pretty in pots, I don't have to actually KNOW anything about them. I'm sure I can learn all the French words for different colors pretty quickly.

Maybe the shopkeeper's life is not for me. I grew up in Montana, I owned horses, I've milked cows. Maybe what I need is a small farm. Hard outdoor work suits homeschooling, we'd have a horse or two, a couple BIG dogs...I could sell milk and eggs. Theoretically, I could learn to make some crazy fancy butter that would make me rich. I'd steer away from cheese, though. These people already have a lock on that. This sweet place is a looks like it used to be a barn. It has at least 3 other barns (one of which could be repurposed into guest rooms for travelers on the Compostela Trail or as guest rooms per the custom here). There are fields and green grass aplenty for the 10 or so cows, and neighbors that look like they could talk me out of any trouble I'd get into.

There is the fixer-upper possibility. Paris is known for its flea markets and, given the casual attitude towards things old here, I should be able to snap up a whole bunch of stuff at reasonable prices. There are a baJILLION sites devoted to women who can transform anything with a can of spray paint and a hot glue gun. This balcony will be transformed into something irresistable and I WILL have working shutters on the doors and windows (red, please, not blue).

I can rent out rooms, but Mark would still need work--that modern heating system I'm going to install won't come cheap.

Memo to self...avoid new French-looking houses. They may be less work, but they are clearly devoid of personality and style. Also, spend some time getting a really cool gate. It matters.

Impossible? Just remember, someone bought this entire CASTLE 25 years or so ago for the low low price of $162,000. I bet he thinks it was worth it, even if he does have to let people basically go in and out of his house every day.

Did I mention that I read Under the Tuscan Sun at least twice a year?

Where will you live in your next real or imagined life? Is it an actual place or something you need that you might find in many places?

Real Spelling

I guess I should correct the impression that Noah and I are here in France because he needed a spelling tutor. Real Spelling is far far more than spelling and I can guarantee that some people who read this blog (that YOU Karen, Lucy, and Ave) would give their kidney to sit at the table with Melvyn Ramsden. He really is a genius--he didn't learn to read or write until he was 10, has mirror laterally (meaning he can't tell his right from his left, he writes normally with his right hand, but backwards like DaVinci with his left), and was a King's College scholar at Cambridge. He reads, writes and speaks English, French, Hebrew, and Arabic--but probably more. He's a linguist who has studied the English language and basically codified a system of spelling for the English language. He's quick to say this is not a method or a program or something's he's developed--it's a pulling together of what linguists have understood for many many years to be true in a way that is accessible and user-friendly for people.

It is an enormous paradigm shift from what we've all be taught about words and spelling, even though we intuitively know that the way we've approached spelling in the past hasn't been very effective. How many times have we all said, "People are born good or bad spellers and that is that." Those who are good at it (like me) have no idea why we are; those that are bad have not had a lot of success becoming good spellers. Research shows that remediating spelling is very difficult and there really is no effective way to do it. Phonics is a system based on sounds, and when spelling is based on or connected to phonics, you end up with the idea that English is very confusing and full of exceptions. Melvyn, and other linguists, understand that you can't understand and work with words in isolation and that the way they are spelled is connected to the meaning. All words have a base element and are added to by prefixes and suffixes. Understanding the structure of how a word is built, understanding what words are related to it and understanding that the spelling is not representing the sound of a word, but rather its meaning, is the key. Because you end up looking at word families, you build vocabulary in astonishing ways. It's very intuitive--you can't teach any one aspect in isolation.

It's really absolutely fantastic. Melvyn is completely totally passionate about words and languages. He's also an academic and hates anything to do with education, so you can imagine me sitting at the table 3 times a day hearing about how education and teachers are getting it all wrong inside out and upside down! When I'm working with him, he won't touch "how" to teach anything. He only focuses on the orthography of the words. Nerd alert here, but I could work on this stuff all day and it would feel like 10 minutes. Looking at the etymologies of words, where they come from, how they're connected, how meanings have changed, is fascinating.


And that's what the kids do. We are implementing the Real Spelling approach (using a teaching system called Word Works) and it is challenging, to say the least. Most of us have never ever been exposed to looking at words like this, and the depth of knowledge you have to develop is considerable. It's pretty intimidating and easy to feel like you know nothing. We have lots of new teachers every year and turn over 25% of our students each year, so it's a challenge to get everyone on the same page. But it makes so much sense and normalizes English in a way that works. Really, all the "exceptions" are gone. You don't ask a child to "sound it out", but instead ask them to spell it, say it, do they know what it means, can they think of any other words that might be related? Believe it or not, there is a 1 page flowchart that will tell you how to correctly add any suffix to any English word. That's pretty amazing. There are also online word checkers and etymologies kids (and teachers) can use. It would be fantastic for homeschoolers and people who are drawn to more classical education.
So, Noah. He does struggle with writing (although his improvement this year has been so great) and spelling is very weak. He approaches it from a phonetic approach and it doesn't work. This opportunity was not just about him being a better speller, per se. It was about giving him the confidence to see that there is logic to our language and that he can be in control of his writing. It's a chance to develop some of those foundational skills and understandings that we can continue to build on. When he's working with Noah and complimenting him and talking about how schools do a disservice to kids and treating him like an adult, I can really see him connecting, even if Noah doesn't say much at the time.


Noah won't come home a new and improved speller. He will come home more confident, able to work with some new tools that will allow him to be more independent, and have a way to increase his vocabulary and understanding of the world by using those tools. So that's making it worth it to us.


Pete Bowers developed a program called Wordworks and he works with schools to implement what Melvyn does within the educational system. Melvyn's Real Spelling site is here and Word Work by Pete Bowers's Word Works site is here if you want to know more.