Clueless in the UK

I have lots of random thoughts going through my head. I knew exactly why I was going to start this entry about 5 minutes ago and now I have no ideas. To keep it interesting I will put in the occasional photo, like right now:

This is the horrible weather we’ve been facing here of late. Just … just terrible.

Today while I was waiting for Jason’s bus to arrive back from the pool where is class goes swimming every Friday afternoon, I heard that a car had over-turned around the corner on High Street. The car was actually on its side, with two elderly people in it. Apparently they were chatting away in their sideways car, unable to get out. But the police were on their way.

While I was standing there, there was the usual Heath street traffic jam this time of the day (pick up kids from school time). Cars were just idling on the hill, except for the occasional (ok - just one) Prius, which of course was not idling at all. It struck me that it’s time for a change: it’s time to go electric. Well, it’s time to go hybrid but not the current style: we need electric cars that are plugged in, but also have generators on board when the battery pack gets too low. It’s the wave of the future and I just wish it could get here now because I can’t stand the way cars work anymore: dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. Electricity is the future and we may as well embrace it sooner rather than later.

Since I wrote the above paragraph, however, I have had my second conversation with somebody about the air quality in London. It comes up because I am having loads of trouble wearing contacts here in London, to the point where I might have to go back to glasses. And the most common explanation is that the air here is quite dirty, esp. with all the diesel engines. So while they may be very clean burning diesels, compared to the US at least, they are still producing a bunch of particulate matter that’s floating around and apparently getting in my eyes (but not Sue’s ;-). So maybe diesel/electric hybrids isn’t the answer.

It’s actually raining right now. It has hardly rained at all in the past few weeks. I don’t know what’s up with that but I think it will be OK. The leaves are starting to turn. I had hoped to take some pictures with my new wide-angle lens from Tamron, but it turned out to suck so much that I had to send it back. That’s always depressing: I expect instant gratification and I am not really capable of handling disappointment. Another one from a different company arrived a few days ago and I was able to take some decent indoor pictures with it, so I am hopeful.

Luckily it was not raining on Guy Fawkes day. He’s the guy that tried to blow up Parliament a few hundred years ago. The Brits celebrate by blowing up fireworks for the weeks before, during and after the official day: November 5th. This year we decided to participate in the festivities, not by going to a show, but by blowing up a few things of our own.

Here’s our fearless leader, Sue, who bought a bunch of fireworks in NC where it’s illegal to set them off, and has been feeling frustrated by that ever since. So here in London she bought some more …

My favorites were the bottle rockets, but Sue wasn’t able to capture the rocket lifting off from the pole in my hand, spraying me with sparks, causing me to scream in excitement every time. I love that it’s completely legal.

We did a couple practice ones in the daylight, too.

We had an audience …

that participated as well:

We had our kids’ parent/teacher conferences. We found out that Jason is struggling and we both felt really bad about that because we didn’t quite notice it and the school didn’t give us any feedback (not for lack of asking, mind you) until his conference 6 or so weeks into the year. We should have known something was up because Jason started referring to himself as dumb and we were wondering where it was coming from. The poor guy has only had 20% english and math his first two years of school in the states (because of the Chinese immersion), so of course he would be behind. He’s also one of the youngest in his class. Nevertheless, we’ve been working with him lately and he’s already started to improve remarkably, in terms of catching up and in terms of renewed confidence. Actually, today he did mind-bogglingly well on his homework, so well that he can see it himself. This is probably one of his biggest growth spurts, and we’re all happy about it.

Here’s Jason participating in the poetry contest. Most kids prepared for weeks, Jason wrote a poem the night before while doing his english homework, and decided he wanted to do that poem in the contest. Is this my son? I don’t think so. My son wouldn’t want to do anything like that, ever. The fact that he wanted to amazed us:

He was very quiet and at the end he forgot to bow, so he didn’t get any applause when he expected it, and I think he was a little unsure what to do at the very end, and then he started to step down and everyone applauded. Sigh. Mind-bogglingly cute. He felt that he did a bad job but we reminded him that most people got to practice for weeks, not just one night.

It’s hard to explain how Jason makes us feel. He seems so vulnerable sometimes and we just want to wrap him in our arms and take care of him. There are times when I have been in his classroom because I am helping the school get their computers into the 21st century, and one day I was there when I heard the teacher say, “OK - who is playing in the chess tournament?” and Jason was looking around, and finally I heard him say, “I don’t know if I am signed up.” He reminds me so much of me, of my childhood where so many things just happened to me and I didn’t feel in control of any of them. I hope we can help Jason have more of a clue beforehand. I think knowing what he is going through might help. Still, Jason is showing renewed confidence in himself and I think that’s a good sign.

Here’s Madeline in the same poetry contest. She is quite confident. I asked her if she was nervous and she said, “No” in that “why the hell would I be nervous” tone of voice:

and she doesn’t look nervous. She smiled at me as she walked to the stage, as I was in the back of the room taking pictures.

She won honorable mention in her age group. This was the first time I think she had done anything like this, at least in English. All the performances were pretty impressive compared to what I am used to of first and fourth graders. I think it’s something that’s taken more seriously in this school.

Here’s Jason when he found out that Madeline won honorable mention:

He’s proud of his big sister even as he is just getting over his disappointment at his own performance.

Last weekend I took Jason to the one-man-star-wars show (it was Sue’s idea). He has created a complete Star Wars addict out of me, I am sorry or happy to say (not sure which). The show was quite funny, some of the humor perhaps lost on Jason, and I quite enjoyed it. Every time I watch episode 3 on DVD, a little more of it makes sense to me. Still, I am always very sad that Anakin turns to the dark side: I keep thinking maybe he won’t turn to the dark side this time, but he always does. Jason has taken to drawing pictures of the various kinds of light sabers, placing crystals in flash lights, and continuing his light saber battles out in the courtyard. I truly hope somebody invents one soon, because I think the force is strong with Jason if only he had a way to channel it.

Madeline’s parent/teacher conference was a little different. It was something along the lines of: So Madeline really is good at everything - you weren’t just exaggerating on her application? Good at everything except perhaps good manners, but even that is changing. We’ve found that the teachers here are not at all afraid to tell the kids to shut up, they don’t hesitate to say “You’re behaving badly and stop it!” and I am starting to realize that that really was not the case in the kids’ previous school. Proper behavior is expected or else, and Madeline seems to have gotten the idea. She’s changing, Sue and I are happy. And so is Madeline, too.

She’s still the only girl on the football team, and she seems to be improving. She scored a goal in the last game (school game, that is - weekend football she’s also the star of her team). She just scored a goal here:

I bought a deep fat fryer, something I am very excited about. I want to cook Chinese food and you can’t do it properly without one. Unfortunately I am unable to figure out how to produce authentic Chinese sauces still, so it’s not working out so well for me. I also want to learn how to cook Indian and Thai food, but really mostly just Indian. Today I tried to make a curry sauce two separate times, and both times were a disaster. The first time I had to spit it back out - I must have done something wrong with the salt. Second time was a little better, but when Sue came home she said, “I smell mushrooms!” That’s … a little discouraging.

In other news, three days after my post about spanking children I received a book from amazon on how to raise children. I was amused, slightly offended, but I decided to read it and I was hooked on the first paragraph (or perhaps page) because it says that among other things this book is going to explain why today’s children are badly behaved compared to our (or probably more likely our parent’s) generation, and why it’s a good thing. And the answer is: Kids today are not afraid of their parents. They are not afraid of us because beating them is no longer acceptable behavior in our society. Luckily all kids want their parents’ approval. And it makes me feel relieved because we try to treat our kids with respect and sometimes all we get back in return is disrespect, and so I worry about the current approach some times.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Clueless in the UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.