Clueless in the UK

But first, today Jason got in big trouble for something he did with another kid in the neighborhood … Problem is, he’s so cute even when he’s doing bad things! Anyway, resolving it involved walking to two houses in the neighborhood and apologizing to two different families. And he’s only 6!

When things like this happen I reach back into my childhood and say, “Ah yes, I screwed up in the same way … That’s my boy!” But now I am starting to wondering if I am rewriting history a little bit when I do that. I can’t be sure whether I am remembering things just so or whether I am inventing a few memories along the way. All I remember for sure is, I had troubles, one of the biggest ones being appropriate behavior at appropriate times. I sure hate to see Jason struggle the way I did.

But this post is about Venice. I’d love to pack in some more pictures about Rome but maybe I will let Sue get a word in edgewise.

We left Rome in this:

and arrived in Venice to this:

We arrived at our hotel 40 minutes later. This was the view out one of our windows:

That first night we went to dinner and were treated to this view:

When on vacation I usually need more of this:

than I actually get. But then again, I need more of that in general.

Here are my impressions of Venice: it’s neat, but crazy, wasteful, a bad idea in general. While we were there the water levels were high and lots of places just flooded at high tide, and shop owners mopped the water out of their shops as soon as the water receded. This is a recurring event, 200 times/year on average. Crazy way to live. This is what they do to allow people without boots (all the tourists) to get around during the floods:

The place is 100% tourist oriented, which means everything is expensive, a lot of it is garbage, and it’s relentless. I literally reached my limit on the third day and was getting a little grumpy. Still, despite the almost oppressive touristy atmosphere of on the island of Murano, we did manage to have a good time checking out some of the neat glass products. When we first got there:

I felt immense pressure to buy something and there was a period of awkwardness for me (and perhaps Sue) that made me very uncomfortable until I realized that I wasn’t going to do anything I didn’t want to do. Finally I said that I didn’t see anything we were interested in, and off we went. Bizarre situation that was probably blown up and out of proportion in my own mind more than anything else. But afterwards it was fun walking around and checking things out that we actually might be interested in buying, rather than £800 hunks of glass for our nonexistent coffee table: beautiful, amazing to look at, but not what we were looking for at all.

Sue says I like to focus on the negative and she might be right. There are lots of other pictures for the things we did in Rome and Venice I will let her share in a positive light. It was a truly amazing place to visit, I must say. Sue and I did have a fantastic dinner on her birthday: I didn’t screw up this time!! I’ll let her tell you all about it.

Before I go, however, I want to show you this picture we took with the new camera I mentioned in the first article. This ultra-compact camera has image stabilization, which allowed me to take the following picture without a tri-pod:

This shot was taken with “Slow-Syncro” flash mode, which is the mode I have talked about with my Rebel Xt, where the camera’s exposure is set based on the ambient lighting, but then the flash is fired as well just long enough to light up the foreground subjects. The end result is you can see the background as well as the foreground, and if you look at this shot closely you can see that the moon is only a little bit blurred despite the fact that I held the camera in my hands for a 1 second exposure. That is incredible. This picture came out so well.

Also in that general area was this happening place we didn’t find until it was too late the last night. A place for wine and fine foods. This was also taken without a flash, 1/3 second exposure, captures the essence quite nicely. You can see one person completely blurred out during that 1/3 second on the right hand side of the store. Good stuff!

[Here's just a few thoughts and pictures that I wrote the day after we arrived but wasn't able to finish or add photos to until now, a week later.]

We seem not to get very much done while we’re doing it but at the end of the day there seems to be quite a lot to talk about.

But before I forget, last night at dinner (where last night was about a week ago) we had the following exchange:

Dad: Jason - I am worried about your sprite getting knocked over.
Jason: Dad - I am worried about you dying of old age.
Dad: Jason - I am worried about your being tickled to death.
Jason: <something about Dad and farts>

Are we doing a good job raising our kids?

The day before at a nice church, Sue was introducing the kids to a confessional. She explained it to them as best she could given her vast experience with them, and then later came up to me to tell to me what happened. Apparently Madeline took it all in and said: “I pick my boogers and eat them, what should I do?” Jason said, “I kicked Madeline in the butt.” That is the extent of our kids’ sins, as far as they are concerned anyway.

But let’s back up to the ride to the hotel from the airport. We had hired a car to drive us straight to the hotel and thank goodness for that - there were lots of turns, lots of made up lanes, and one accident on the way to the hotel. The driver - he was a little iffy. He was holding up a sign with our name on it in the airport, but that’s where the warm fuzzy feeling ended: he was on his cell phone chatting away in an animated fashion, and just motioned that we should follow him. When we got to his car there were a couple others there arguing with him as we loaded the luggage in his trunk. We dutifully sat in the car waiting for him to get in, and I ended up with the impression that the two guys outside arguing with our guy … well, frankly I thought they wanted our car. All the driver said, as he popped his head into the car fumbling through his large wads of cash for a second, was “There is a problemmmmmmme.”

Once the car started moving things didn’t improve. He was counting his money, organizing the junk in dash storage (where the CDs used to go), and occasionally looking up to make adjustments to the path the car was taking, with the occasional glare from presumably other Italian drivers who were not used to this behavior. This guy made up lanes, ignored all stop signs (except that he admittedly did slow down a little) and basically just “used the force” to get us to our hotel.

But then Sue started chatting him up, and that’s when we found out that he can’t afford to live in Rome, that your white shirts turn black if you spend any time in Rome (referring to the car pollution - they are into diesels in Europe …), that he prefers the quiet of country living and … oh yeah, he needs room for his 100 snakes, 400 frogs, and various other reptiles I cannot remember anymore. The part which sticks out in my mind is the part about the white python (I need to look that up) which is 6 meters long, which started out 18″ when he first got it, and how he used to drive around with the snake in his shirt when the snakes were still small, until a lady passenger spotted the snake and screamed and made him pull over on the side of the road.

Still who am I to complain? We got to the hotel in one piece and we’re quite happy with the hotel. It has the best bed configuration we have ever encountered for a single room: Mom and Dad in the middle, the kids separated on each side:

The next day we took one of those open top bus tours of Rome, and got off near an area that included the Pantheon. To get there we drove by the Coliseum and Forum and promised the kids we would go there the next day with our private tour guide. Here is the teaser:

That is one awesome building.

We had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at a cafe with a bathroom and cappucinos. So, yes, I had two cappucinos in one day - very bad, normally reserved for days when we have evening parties where I plan to drink heavily.

We ended up in a nice piazza with lots of artists in the middle, lots of restaurants on the side, and the occasional church as well, which is where the kids made their first official confessions mentioned above. We had a nice lunch, I had 1/4 carafe of red wine, the kids had pizza and/or pasta, and everything was goooood. The Pantheon was impressive. It said, “This is a sacrad place, please be quiet” but it was so loud in there I had to yell at the kids to be quiet

While wandering around Madeline was practicing her French counting. She’s taking french in school because she has to. She was originally upset about it, and three years behind of course, but now she sees it as a challenge and is attacking it the way she attacks all challenges: head on and relentlessly. Here she can be seen counting in French as she hops over barriers in the streets of downtown Rome. The girl in back of her tried to follow in her footsteps and almost hurt herself in the process:

Below is the woman Madeline very nearly bumped into (I am not kidding) because she wasn’t looking where she was going:

Here are the kids at their first dinner:

It was threatening to rain all day yesterday. The weather forecasts for this trip have been as dour as all the forecasts we get in London - but it almost never materializes there and the same has been true here as well. Occasional light drizzle and lots of sun, not the heavy rain we had been promised every day since we got here. (And we have the pictures to prove it!) Today was no exception, so we wrapped our rain coats around our waistes and took off to meet our guide at the Coliseum.

Our tour guide today was Olivia. She came on recommendation from friends we met where we live in London, who had the pour taste to leave shortly after we got there. Apparently she was good at dealing with kids with lots and LOTS of questions. However, she wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with kids who wanted to “go back to england” within 15 minutes of starting the tour!

What did I learn about the Romans today (before I forget).

1. The Roman empire was … large.
2. So large it was split into west and east portions.
3. Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine (or eastern Roman) empire, Rome was the capital of the western part.
4. It took 12 to 14 days for soldiers to march from Rome to London (amazing, if true).
5. Rome got Christianity around three or four hundred AD.
6. The western empire fell in the late four hundred AD time frame, the eastern one lasted another 1000 years or so until the Ottoman Empire kicked its butt (I think).
7. The Coliseum was built in 8 or 9 years, in 72 AD or thereabouts.
8. It was funded with Jewish gold stolen from Jeruselum. There’s a carving in one of the gates into the Forum showing a menorah in the hands of 12 men carrying it and the arc of the covenant.

This seems like a lame list. I was very interested at the time. Madeline just read some Roman series books (for kids) and since she has basically perfect memory (something I am very envious of, in a proud way) she was chatting away with our guide about all sorts of things. Things like, “Remember in such-and-such book when so-and-so said ‘blah’ around page 48 …” Madeline reads so much and clearly retains it all; it’s pretty scary for somebody like me to watch, since I read the same thing over and over just to retain 10% of it, and have been that way my whole life. Which is Jason’s lot in life for sure: if I ever get a whole sentence out of my mouth with him still listening at the end, it’s cause for celebration.

Here’s a typical scene with Madeline and Olivia going at it:

Here’s a picture as we approach the Coliseum of the extent of the Roman empire over time. I didn’t know until I moved here (sigh) that the Roman’s conquered England:

Here are some amazing pictures of the Coliseum. Wait - I said that wrong. Here are some pictures of the amazing Coliseum.

This one from the ground floor. They used to routinely flood and drain this place, to add variety to the ways people were killed:

Here we’re looking down into the arena, and Olivia is showing us a picture of how it looked back in its day. This picture was taken with our new, compact camera: Canon IXUS 800 SD with image stabilization (more on this sweet little camera, later …):

This one we’re just walking around looking for the beer before the game starts:

Back on the outside after our guided tour is done:

That is one kick ass building, still standing 2000 years later. I’d seen it 17 years ago, it’s still amazing.

The kids were quite bored today, to be sure. They said as much almost immediately. Still they stuck with it. On the way home we walked down a street which was basically closed to cars all day, closed as a suggestion more than anything. The reason they are doing it, apparently, is that they want to kill this particular road completely, a road built by Mussolini, because there is an ancient Roman city underneath it which is attached to the Forum that they’d kinda like to excavate. Here are some of the things we encountered along the way back to our hotel:

This guy was good, very good:

The next two are of Madeline and Jason looking at something. The purple on the side is a clue:

Here’s the wide-angle. It was just a fan blowing around this tube of plastic, to the delight of tons of kids and adults alike:

These “angels” ran around striking a pose trying to look like ancient statues:

Josh and Mike - I was sure we visited the Forum back in 1989. Do you remember when that young lady scolded us for being … um American dorks? Wasn’t that the Forum? If so … it’s changed. I am thinking it must have be some other place instead. Also, Josh, if you can remember where we stayed in Rome that would be great. I am curious. I have memories of it but really cannot figure out where it is on the map.

More later …

Madeline and Jason are now calling me “Mum.” They started at a British school about a month ago and ever since then, we’ve noticed a gradual transformation of their daily speech.

“I need to go to the loo!”
“Where are my trainers?”
“That’s brilliant!”
“Let’s go straight away.”
“He’s so pathetic.”
“I have loads of them”
“Can I have some crisps?”

I’m sure if we had put them into an American school, this delightful transformation would not be happening. Jonathan has accused me of sounding very british when I’m talking on the phone to other brits. All I can say is that I can’t help it and I take back every mean thing I ever said about Madonna and her fake british accent. If you’re surrounded by it, it’s bound to happen.

At school, Jason is in Year 2 (equivalent to grade 1), and Madeline in Year 5 (equivalent to grade 4). I like that their school has uniforms and that they’re able to include more arts & music as part of the curriculum. Both kids are able to take private piano lessons during school time which has been great. They’re also both learning french (required for British curriculum) and have weekly swim lessons at the local community pool with their class. At some point they will do drama, ceramics and learn to play cricket (England’s national sport). I’m hoping that Madeline will agree to join the school choir next term since she loves to sing.

We’ve been quite amazed with how well (and quickly) both kids have adapted to their new school and making friends. This was the first year that Jason did not cry at drop off on his first day of school. I think all of the changes over the summer have helped him to adapt better to new things. This is also the first year he has had any home work. We knew that he’d have some catching up to do in reading, but were caught off guard at the advanced level of math and spelling. We’re not too worried though, as the school has a good home work system and Jason has made some good progress already. I have to mention that I’m very appreciative of Jonathan’s patient teaching style because it has been a real challenge trying to teach Jason the concept of 2-digit subtraction when he was previously only doing single digit addition! We’ve also had to accelerate his spelling because he’s being tested each week on 4 and 5-letter words already.

Believe it or not, I was a bit more worried about Madeline’s adjustment at first because we had heard that her teacher had the reputation as being the toughest teacher at the school, with a “victorian” teaching style. Even so, Madeline was able to adjust quickly and was awarded “star of the week” during her first week of school. She was quite proud coming home that day, and showing me the gold star pasted into her home work diary. She seems to be doing very well academically, and it’s flattering and amazing to see that she has been able to just slide into the next logical grade here, even though she was coming from a U.S. school and a bi-lingual school to boot (where english subjects were only taught 50% of the time).

Both kids have unanimously agreed that their favorite part of school is “going to the Heath” every day (weather permitting). Last week, Madeline’s class went on a 2-mile cross country jog across the heath. It’s really great that the kids can just walk to the heath every day to enjoy nature and breathe in some fresh air without having to be bussed around like most urban schools.

Here’s one of the main trails dubbed “Lime Avenue” by the locals, also the scene of where I sprained my ankle for the second time since we’ve been in London (the first time was also on the heath).

The trail looks harmless enough, but when you’re busy talking and walking on an uneven rocky trail and not paying attention to where you are stepping, not to mention having a bad ankle with no ankle support (wearing sneakers), then you’re just asking for trouble. Down I went, on the way to watch Madeline’s first football match. The important thing is that I managed to hobble the rest of the way (with Jonathan’s help) to watch her match. I’ve learned my lesson and am now walking around with my hiking boots and plan on wearing them when ever I go near the heath.

Jason came home one day with his pockets stuffed with “conkers.” He collected them at the heath during science class and managed to fill every pocket he had.

We’ve figured out that the conkers are horse chestnuts and apparantly a favorite autumn past time of english children. Evidently, you drill a hole through a conker, tie a string through it, and then whack it against a friend’s conker to try and smash theirs to bits first. We haven’t tried it yet since we don’t have a drill bit.

In true Madeline fashion, she has already managed to become known as “the girl” who plays football (soccer) at her school. She was hand picked by the P.E. coach to play on the school team.

Yes (unfortunately), she is the only girl on the team, but that hasn’t kept her down. They had their first match last week against another school. Everyone noticed how much bigger the other team was.

Madeline was a bit anxious since she was the only girl playing in the match and the opponents were huge.

In the end, her team lost despite a valiant effort. They felt better after learning that the other school had stacked their team with 11-12 year olds, whereas Madeline’s team had primarily 8-10 year olds.

Aside from their regular schooling, we’re trying to keep their Mandarin education going. This is definitely going to be our biggest challenge while we’re here. Mandarin immersion schools just don’t exist out here, so we’ve decided to go with a private tutor for now. I was initially hoping to have them attend a weekend school, but was quite disappointed after visiting a few (not to mention the commute). We’ll see how it goes!

I’ve recently started a “life drawing” class. I must stay that I was very reluctant to do it since I’m not much of an artist and haven’t done any drawing since high school. Well, it was being taught by a British mom who is a parent at our kids’ school. She kept after me and assured me it was very informal and fine for beginners. I figured, we’re in a new country, doing new things, meeting new people, so I might as well try it. Naively, I was expecting we’d be drawing still life fruit, flowers in vases, etc. (I was really too embarassed to ask what “life drawing” was). Can you imagine my surprise when I showed up to find a nude model!! Well, after the initial shock, after which I think I let out a nervous giggle to another mom, I actually learned how to measure proportions holding a pencil to my eye and draw with charcoal. My teacher says I’ve improved quite a bit after my second class, which is encouraging.

Madeline still believes in the tooth fairy. Tonight she lost her first big molar. She wrote the following note to the tooth fairy:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I was wondering if I could keep my first real molar. I was also wondering if you are a different tooth fairy now that I am in London?

Cheers,
Madeline

She’s almost 9. She’s going to go to school tomorrow and brag about this. What are the odds that she finds out the truth the hard way?

Meanwhile, isn’t it funny that she said “Cheers”?

So what do you think? Should we break it to her gently tomorrow morning OR should we let all the sophisticated English kids break it to her? Maybe all the kids in her class still believe.

or I could have called this, “Why Jason is driving me to drink.” Actually, I wanted to write an entry about Jason and drinking last week, and today I feel compelled to write about the futility of spanking.

Which is a good thing, if you’re at all progressively minded in this area. Still, sometimes I am just grateful that I am just spanking instead of what I feel like doing: throwing him off the second floor balconey via a plate glass window. Luckily we have no plate glass windows here … and on and on I go.

Still Jason has always had this figured out. The first time he was ever spanked or perhaps just smacked or perhaps it was an angry love tap for all I know, he turned around and said, “Do it again, do it harder.” And today was no exception. He asked me to do it 1 million times, and I said “OK” and got to 50 before I gave up. Luckily I didn’t really want to do it, and we were able to get on with his piano lesson and he promised that he will try to play middle C with the correct finger from now on (just kidding).

You know, I don’t really believe in spanking. Why threaten your kids with physical punishment where there are so many other mean things to threaten them with which don’t leave any marks. There’s the “stand in the corner for 10 minutes without moving” or “you will not get an ice cream after dinner” or the most effective one we have ever had: “You may not go out to play with your friends for 10 minutes.” Imagine if things got really ugly and we told them, “No playing in the neighborhood tonight!”

Today, for example, Sue and I went out to see our first movie since arriving in London. We saw An Inconvenient Truth and it was better than I expected and I had high expectations. It was only £17 for a matinee for the two of us! Easily manipulated by clever directors, luckily I was able to wipe away the tears before anybody noticed. When we got home, the kids were looking out the window, three of their friends were sitting on the brick wall in front of the house, and it turns out the kids and their friends were all waiting until we got home so they could come out to play. Mind-boggling is the only way to put it.

Speaking of mind-boggling, I just saw that movie today and last night I picked up the following book from a great GREAT book store in London called Foyles (I think). My tax guy from the US was visiting last week and he went to the store to get gift certificates for the kids, and we all went down there yesterday to check it out. Fantastic. Thanks Neil!

Oh, so the book: The Bottomless Well: The twilight of fuel, the virtue of waste, and why we will never run out of energy. I picked it up without reading any reviews at amazon because it seemed rather interesting. I’ll let you know if it doesn’t suck, and if you already know that it sucks, drop me a comment to let me know.

Lately things have been a little dramatic for me. I finally decided to get my hair cut so I went to a really cheap place in Swiss Cottage. I got a nice lady from Turkey to cut my hair and I told her what usually goes wrong when people cut my hair. She made a valiant effort but when I got home Sue said: “That is a really bad hair cut.” She didn’t just say it once, either, more like every time I walked by her. Reminded me of the time I got my hair cut back in the old Sun days and when I showed up back at the office, Lisa said, “What the hell happened to you?!” What had happened to me was simple: I got into an argument about politics with my hair cutter, and when I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea to let all the poor people just die, he said, “OK - you’re done, your hair cut is done.” I was so shocked I gave him a big tip and ran out of there as quickly as I could. I … I have said it before … but I really wish I were kidding.

So today I went to a local place and told them that I got a bad hair cut and can they please fix it? This time I got a very nice woman from France. I told her that something went wrong and I asked her to evaluate my haircut and tell me what she thought had happened and how she might fix it. (If only I did job interviews this well!) She hit the nails on their heads and I hired her on the spot! (Of course, I was already in her chair and frankly I think everyone was enjoying the story and the analysis by then …) We talked about the pros and cons of getting it cut super short (the bangs already were super short and there wasn’t a lot of room for adjustments) and in the end we decided just to fix the rest and not take it all down to a buzz. Still, I think that’s in my future, just once.

Anyway, I have pictures but they don’t do it justice. The before picture doesn’t look that bad and the after picture doesn’t look all that different - but trust me on this one … When we were done I said, “I look like George Clooney from the hair up!”

So what happens when you drop a knife on the kitchen floor and just hear a single thud? Dad runs upstairs to get the camera!

These are supposed to be hard wood floors but that is a butter knife!!!!!!!!!!! This explains all the marks all over the floor. It’s a shame. This house was redone nicely inside, but they went with cheap stuff (probably quite expensive, but cheap quality).

I think Sue is working on an entry with lots of nice pictures so do be sure to read that one, will you?