Week of December 8, 2012

School this week is over and we are looming dangerously close to Christmas in a country that gives so few clues that Christmas is coming. Unfortunately this makes Christmas shopping difficult to get finished in a timely manner. Fortunately, though, the kids remain buckled down without constant reminders of an approaching Christmas holiday.

Here is the report du semaine:

Tian
This week at co-op we did a writing exercise that made us write as quickly as possible. We had a two minute set time and had to write as much as possible on a topic/in a story before we passed it on. It was fun because we passed them around and the other students made characters get eaten, which I think is hilarious.

Here is the story entitled The Beautiful Girl, with a ten writers contributing.

The beautiful girl is actually not beautiful. Everyone just says she is. Truth be told, she is incredibly ugly. How she got the name "The Beautiful Girl" is unknown. As a matter of fact, she was so ugly that everyone thought it was time to be rid of her so they stuffed her in a barrel and threw her down Niagra Falls. When they found the barrel, they chopped her up and sold her to a shop called "Sale of Chicken Murder" in Nizwa (ed note: for those of you who have not been to Nizwa, it is a pretty racey place). How mean was that? 

However, life was not so easy for a chopped up chunk of meat with a 3 OR sticker on her. She was not even recognized as a human being. Poor poor Karis, for her name was Karis (ed note: Karis is the most popular girl in co-op). You have probably met her before.

Well, another lovely girl at the co-op tried to salvage her remains. This girl doing the salvaging was really truly kind--do not be deceived! The salvaging girl was named Kelly. Unfortunately, Kelly did not realize that the Karis blob wrapped inside the package and marked with a 3 OR sticker was actually alive. She buried Karis's remains, and the living blob called Karis ended up suffocating.

The amazingly beautiful Kelly mourned the loss of Karis until Kelly's paranormal romance began. Kelly's vampire boyfriend named Gary convinced the once kind Kelly to dig up Karis's remains and feast on what was left of Karis.

Gary took Kelly to the store so they could buy some ingredients to cook Karis's remains. Their list contained hot sauce, pepper, and salt. But the amazing Kelly heard the truth about her boyfriend and Karis...they had been involved while Karis was still alive! Enraged, she broke up with her boyfriend and called the vampire police, who arrested him.

Then Kelly dug up Karis's remains and brought her to a hospital where they were able to sew Karis back together. Overjoyed, Kelly returned Karis to her family and they lived happily ever after.

Jensen
Of course the Indus Valley Day was my very favorite. I also enjoyed bring the Indian bride because it was fun to see Zara getting so dressed up and farded (ed note: look that one up in the dictionary!).

Making the kitchari was exciting because I enjoy cutting up potatoes (aloo in Hindi!).

Acdemically I learned that math is evil because I got a 10% on my first assignment of the week. Now, though, I am up to an 80%. Additionally, I suspect that Tian and I are morphing into one math mind as we have had identical grades on our math. This is creepy.

Silas
I am still writng a story called Super Dog Sox. It's about animals who are spies. It takes place in Oman with the main characters being Harry (my cat), Snowy (Jensen's cat), Sox (Cady's dog), and Zara's many many cats. It is not technically a school assignment but I use all of my spare time in school to write it.

I finished the first story in the series last week. It is called Super Cat Harry. Harry has powers, like laser powered fighting, super strength, and lots more.

What about school work? I don't remember anything. Oh, there is this really hard thing called upside down multiplication, and it's super hard to me because you have to line up columns of numbers and I am just not getting it.

Tehva
Today I am sick and I have a fever so I am not talking to anyone. So there.

Zara
Zara also has the fever and vomiting disease and isn't here today.

Aside from the usual excitement and our Indus Valley Day, the week was pretty low-key.

Indus Valley Day

It is hard to study ancient Indus Valley civilizations. Why? Well, this is a civilization that just spontaneously disappeared, leaving very little in the way of clues as to why it disappeared. And to top that off, the Indus Valley civilizations' writings remain largely untranslated.

But not to worry, I have become the master of fill-in-the-gaps. When Indus Valley began to loom large in the headlights, I gave Nancy a call and she came to our rescue! Nancy was born and raised in Lucknow, India, making her the closest thing to the ancient Indus Valley civilization that I could come up with on short notice.

Nancy went straight to work setting up an afternoon of delicious excitement. We started out with a lesson on masalas (spices), kitchari (dal, rice, and vegetable stew), sheera (desert), and chutney. In addition, we got to learn how to say, in Hindi, all of the vegetables that we chopped. If our internet provider ever comes out of the Dark Ages, I will post a video of that very thing.

Rosie stirring the semolina for the sheera.

 Perusing the spice selection with Aly's help.

Lunch all finished and on the table. The chutney is in the middle, with the sheera (imagine cream o' wheat meets saffron, cashews, butter, and sugar) in the foreground, and the kitchari in the pot.




After lunch, Nancy had a Hindi movie all cued up and ready to play. The kids watched the dancing with their little jaws on the floor while the kitchari digested in their bellies. Nancy talked a little bit about weddings and some of the traditions surrounding marriage, and then whipped out her wedding dress and dressed each of the girls in it, complete with make-up. This was Tian's take on the whole process:

 But the others got way into the dressing up thing, with Zara even going in for the whole outfit.

The toothless "bride"

The "bride" who needed to be upheld by Nancy

The demure "bride"

The red-eyed bride

It was rough going, but we eventually peeled them all away from the wedding stuff to come outside and learn about traditional ways of keeping the bad gods out and the good gods in. Nancy took a bag of white powder and quickly made a design at her doorstep. Then she gave each of the kids a bag of colorful powder and had them fill in the design. Finally, she gave each a clay pot, a wick, and some cooking oil and had them light lamps inside the design. This, she said, would bring only good to the house.

There was lots more to see and do but we ran out of time and so we bade a tearful farewell to our Indus Valley expert.

It was possibly the coolest field trip ever.