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Tgirl4….turned 5

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Brasov, Romania

 

What did you think of the trip Tgirl5?

It was fun. I like walking around towns and riding horses in Mongolia. Chinese food was nice, especially noodle soup. The tuktuk was very squished. I learnt to draw flowers and to stay with Mama and Dadda. When I am tired I will not squat down again. I cried and cried a long time when I couldn’t find you. But the lady rang someone on her telephone and she came and took me downstairs and gave me lots of lollies and a banana, but I didn’t know if I was allowed to eat them, so I didn’t even though I really wanted to before everyone came.

(explanatory notes: Whenever given the option of noodle soup or rice and something, Tgirl5 ALWAYS chose noodle soup! Whenever we took a tuktuk it was very squished – but the record was 14 people in one! When we were in the Hermitage, T crouched down while we took photos – when she looked up we were gone. We did not miss her for a few minutes…and did not find her for many many minutes….enough that everyone was worried. We have not lost her since. And because she sticks so close to us, she is in almost every photo…and because she is so cute, it was impossible to limit her selection of photos to only a few….which is nice for her; The Law Of Family Photo Taking states she, as one of the younger children in the family, is likely to have only a few pics, certainly not as many as the firstborn!)

 

Jboy13, the eldest son

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Brasov, Romania

“What’ve you learnt over this past year?” I asked last week.
Jboy13 managed to reply, “How to empty a portapotti.”

Left alone for a few minutes, he then produced another answer (although I must say I remain grateful that he was such a competent loo-emptier, and saved me from ever having to complete the task).
”I now have a better understanding of money.”

Maybe it started here:

On a train in China, a man boarded with this little clipboard, and proceeded to give a long spiel about counterfeit money. Unfortunately for Joe Chinaman, it is impossible to tell whether a note is counterfeit or not – he even had samples for you to check. But fortunately for the passengers on the train, he also had a special little UV torch, which, if purchased on the spot, could be used to show you the authenticity of your notes. Another gadget is not what we needed, so we made a point of only using authorised money-changers and not using enormous denominations.
Jboy13, meanwhile, enjoyed inspecting the samples!

A few weeks later he was up near the top of Hong Kong’s tallest building, this time inspecting a display of the counterfeit measures taken in Hong Kong to protect their monetary system. Actually, make that systems plural – three different banks and the government all produce money there, each designing their own notes.

Added to these experiences, was the opportunity to *use* money. At home I don’t even carry five cents on me; I use a card for all purchases and so the children had rarely seen real money being used. Some smaller ones even thought if you produced your card you could buy whatever you wanted.
One of the things we wanted to do on the trip was to allow the kids to make money-decisions with us. And using *actual* money has made this very easy. Flashing a few baht in front of them in Thailand and asking them to decide whether it should be spent on a truck ride home or that we walk the three kilometres and buy ice-creams on the way started the process.
Comparing prices in different countries for the same products – a loaf of bread, a kilo of rice or the cheapest local fruit – enhanced their money-savviness, not to mention improved their mental arithmetic!
Today the older kids were sent out to do the day’s food shopping. They were given the freedom to walk further to a particular supermarket to buy the pasta at well under half the cost of getting it at the market and also buy themselves something with a portion of the savings – or to just get everything at the market and a closer supermarket. They came home with chocolate! WIN-WIN Actually, they really won; the man, who they bought a cauliflower from, would not accept any payment at all!!!
They have also had money of their own to spend. The six-year-old has struggled most with this; he could determine to save it all and precisely twenty-seven seconds later be tempted to the point of wanting to spend by a bag of lollies. More Than Once. Jboy13 limited his purchases to significant items: a watch, an electronic game and a crossbow. He still has money in the bank too. And now understands better what the numbers stand for (the children had always had virtual bank accounts kept in a notebook at home, and Jboy’s in particular had seen a lot of activity with his flower press business – but now it means so much more).

Being a boy, who pays an inordinate amount of attention to detail, he has noticed a lot more about money than any of the rest of us. In fact, it sparked an interest to compile a bunch of pictures of coins and notes every country we have visited for more than a day.….which then grew into a mind-numbing comprehensive array of details about other aspects of those countries, too – flag, capital city, official languages, population, average rainfall and temperature, and time zones (Russia is fascinating!)
Having produced this *stuff*, we thought it might as well have a broader purpose and should be displayed on the blog….if you would like to have a squiz, you can go to the pretty interesting stuff page. Sadly, to our DetailsMan, the computer will not support the non-latin scripts he so painstakingly gathered – each country written in its local script….so you’ll just have to imagine squiggles and dots and dashes and all sorts of interesting writing!

*celebrate*

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Brasov, Romania December first always signifies the beginning of our Christmas preparations. A year ago we were in Laos, the most non-Christian country we have visited. This year, it’s Romania, and we have six months of frequent church-visiting behind us. One of the ... [Continue reading this entry]

if you go up in the woods today….

Friday, November 20th, 2009
Brasov, Romania You might meet a bear and you could go by cable car. But true to our tradition, we walked. And when you’ve walked to the top, you don’t want to take the cable car down; you want to run, trip ... [Continue reading this entry]

when everything goes wrong in the kitchen…

Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Brasov, Romania …you end up with a lot of corn. A LOT! Perhaps it all started last night. Someone burnt the rice, but salvaged a fair portion of it. En route to the table he dropped it. Someone else put the oats on to ... [Continue reading this entry]

hard to say

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Brasov, Romania We arrived in Romania knowing how to say “Praise the Lord!” in Romanian and that we had once known how to say, “I love you”. Both have fairly limited contexts for use. Quickly we learnt:   yes no thank you is good/fine a few numbers Guten Appetit hot ... [Continue reading this entry]

dooo-do-do-doo

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Krakow, Poland She heard the whoosh of the car racing at breakneck speed through the puddle. She turned to see who, on that busy street behind her, would wear the splash. It turned out to be her! The car had sounded as if ... [Continue reading this entry]

boys need daddies

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Krakow, Poland Look how nippy it was this morning:

And last night it was –11*C in Brasov, where we are soon headed, so everyone is hoping the forecast snow will be a biggie! Anyway, I digress, ... [Continue reading this entry]

cookin’ up a storm in a teacup

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Krakow, Poland

“When we get back” conversations emerge occasionally now, and on one particular occasion turned to chores. I was most excited to discover that my workforce has now reached such proportions that I find myself almost entirely ... [Continue reading this entry]

“What do you write about on a day like today when we did nothing mum?” asked Kboy12

Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Krakow, Poland Well, my dear boy, speak for yourself! YOU may have done nothing, but someone went to the market this morning to buy our food for the day. So I could write about the things I saw, the conversations I ... [Continue reading this entry]