Lithuania and Latvia Interview

On January 8, Zara and I went to interview a lady called Ms. Monique about Lithuania and Latvia.  

Questions about Latvia
Zara: What are people from Latvia called?
Ms.Monique: People from Latvia are called Latvians.

Zara: What language do people speak in Latvia?
Ms. Monique: In Latvia some people speak Latvian, but mostly people speak Russian.

Zara: Is there a traditional food in Latvia?
Ms. Monique: There's no proper one but most people make these thin pancakes which you can put things like vegetables, meat etc. on.

Zara: What do the houses in Latvia look like?
Ms. Monique: I'm not sure.

Zara: Are there any special celebrations in Latvia?
Ms. Monique: Yes there are celebrations, but there's also loads of saint days.

Zara: What are the main religions in Latvia?
Ms. Monique: Most people are either atheists or Catholics.

Zara: What's the climate like in Latvia?
Ms. Monique: In the summer, the hottest it can get is thirty five degrees, and the sun would come up about 04:00 a.m and end at about 18:00. In winter it would be really cold. I can't remember how cold it was but the winter months would feel very long and the days would be quite short.

Zara: What are Latvians famous for?
Ms. Monique: I guess Latvians would be famous for their dancing, as it's really good.

Questions about Lithuania
Zara: What are people called in Lithuania?
Ms. Monique: In Lithuania people are called Lithuanians.

Zara: Is there any famous food in Lithuania?
Ms. Monique: Lithuanians' famous food is zeppelini. You take potatoes. Mash them and boil some water. You take a chunk of meat and some vegetables to make a sort of meat biscuit. It has very high calories though.

Zara: Are there any special traditions?
Ms. Monique: There's a tradition that if two people were to get married and in the way of getting to the church there is a bridge, the groom will have to pick up the bride and carry her over it.

Zara: Are there any unique things about Lithuania?
Ms. Monique: Lithuania, is along the Baltic Sea and has a port. It's unique because it has a port that doesn't freeze, even in winter, which is great for trading.

Zara: Are there any interesting stories you can tell us?
Ms. Monique: There's a legend about a wolf. It's about a Iron wolf and it's supposed to be about the king. But considering I don't know all the details about the story, I don't want to tell you the story, so I won't. Sorry.
Jensen: Awww, boo.

Zara: What do the houses look like?
Ms. Monique: To get into the houses, well the houses are quite high, because when it snows in Lithuania, it snows a lot. So when you get to someone's house you would probably have to go up a couple of  stairs to get in the house. And so then you would probably see inside the house, on the first floor there is the kitchen and the family living room. Then you would go up the stairs to see the bedrooms. Some houses are different from others, but most of them are Communist buildings so mostly you see a lot of houses which look the same.

Zara: Jensen has been dying for me to ask this question, so are there any famous people from Lithuania?
Ms. Monique:  Lithuanians are actually quite good at basketball. Lithuanians are really tall, so they're quite good at the game. So there are famous basketball players.

Zara: What is the main religion in Lithuania?
Ms. Monique: Lithuanians are either Christians, Catholic, Russian Orthodox, or Atheists.

Zara: What did you do in Lithuania?
Ms. Monique: I was an English teacher at a university.

Zara: What does the traditional outfit in Lithuania look like?
Ms. Monique: *shows us a doll* So women who were married would cover their hair with a cloth, while girls will wear a hat, and they can show some hair. Girls also wear colourful patterned skirts and a plaid shirt. Older women will usually wear a plainer skirt and and a long sleeve blouse.
Jensen: Ooooh, how interesting!

Zara: What are Lithuanians famous for?
Ms. Monique: I'd say they're really good at wood carvings *shows three different spoon/forks*
Jensen: That's so cool
Ms. Monique: Yeah, and they're also good because they can last for a long time.

Zara: Okay, well thank you for letting us interview you.
Jensen: Thank you very much
Ms. Monique: You're welcome, thank you for coming.

(Left to right:) Jensen, Zara, Ms. Monique

The Mohenjo-Daro Interview with Lata

Mohenjo-Daro is in Pakistan, which is one of the Stan countries.
(We are studying the Stan Countries. They are very interesting.) The Indus Valley was an ancient civilization from about 4,000 years ago. The Indus part was where India got its name. Mohenjo-Daro disappeared over mysterious circumstances. No one is sure what happened to it, although some people have said that it might have disappeared because of climate change, or maybe aliens. To make things more confusing, archaeologists found 44 ancient skeletons in Mohenjo-Daro in the 20th century AD. No one has been able to figure out why they didn't decompose over the years!

We interviewed Mrs. Lata. She knows about Mohenjo Daro and has even been there! She has a very interesting story about having been there when she lived in Pakistan. So, here is the interview.

Cady: Were there any tar pits where the 44 skeletons were found?

Lata: No, there weren't any.

Cady: What is the climate like in Mohenjo Daro?

Lata: A very hot summer. In September it is cooler than here.

Cady: What is the language that supposedly originated in Mohenjo-Daro?

Lata: It is called Sindhi. It has 52 letters. All the letters end in vowels.

Cady: Is Mohenjo Daro near the Indus River?

Lata: Yes. But the river dried up.

Cady: Do you have any interesting stories about Mohenjo Daro?

Lata: Yes. There is one story I know. It is about the excavation. When the diggers were looking for Mohenjo Daro, they found a figurine of a dancing girl. They fought over it so much, it had to be put in the museum.

Cady: Are there people living in Mohenjo Daro now?

Lata: No. People are not living in Mohenjo Daro now because it is buried under a lot of rubble. Only 30 or 33 percent is dug up.

Cady: There is a theory about a nuclear bomb hidden under Mohenjo Daro because there is a spot where rocks are fused together. Nothing can fuse rocks together except really, really hot conditions. Have you seen it?

Lata: I don't know what you are talking about.

Cady: Oh. Well, next question.

Cady: Who did the citizens of Mohenjo Daro trade with?

Lata: Arabs merchants and the Chinese.

Cady: What do you call people from Mohenjo Daro?

Lata: Sindese.

Bonus Question.

Cady: Did the people of Mohenjo-Daro have someone to look up to at ceremonies?

Lata: Yes. They had a priest. But they had no king.

Moldova Interview

Yesterday, the 8th of January, we interviewed Mr. Bill and Mrs. Kim about Moldova.

The Cast:

- Izzy: Interviewer (1)

- Tehva:  Interviewer (2)

- Tian: Secretary

- Mr. Bill: Interviewee

- Mrs. Kim: Interviewee


  Izzy: What traditional foods were in Matilda?
 
    Tian: Psst! Moldova!

    Izzy: Oh, I mean Moldova.

    Mrs. Kim: Well, a common food was Mamaliga which is a corn mush that's boiled. It's texture is like grits.

   Mr. Bill: There was also Cultinash which is Ravioli but without tomato sauce.

   Izzy:  What is the traditional outfit in Matilda---- Oh! Moldova!

   Mr. Bill: Well they did have a traditional out fit but it's really difficult to describe.

   Mrs. Kim: But the people in Moldova all wore fur hats. They were circular. What's funny is all of the class rooms had mirrors in them so in the winter when the students come in, they can fix their hair if the hat messed it up. Hey, you know, also at weddings every one dances. Everyone. But Bill and I don't dance. But you see, we went to a wedding and they forced us to dance.

Izzy: So, what's the weather like there?

Mr. Bill: Well, in Balti, where we were staying, the winters were really cold and grey and the summers were super hot. The climate there was like in Virginia in the mountains.

Tehva: What... is Moldova....famous for?

Mr. Bill: Moldova is mostly famous for its wine and champagne. When they were part of the soviet union, they would provide wine and champagne for them.

Izzy: What were you doing in Matilda? Oops, Moldova? Why were you there?

Mrs. Kim: We were teaching at the university and training teachers. We were in Moldova for about 9 months.

Tehva: We know Moldova is poor, but how poor is it?

Mr. Bill: People are not starving. The teachers were not paid for very long periods and everyone went to school because intelligence is very important.

Izzy: What is the most common religion in Moldova?

Mrs. Kim: It's mostly Orthodox Christian. Orthodox Christian is basically the same but with different holidays. Their Christmas was the 7th.

Tehva: Who does Moldova trade with.

Mr. Bill: Well, Moldova was connected to Russia economy, they traded through Russia but when they split, Moldova had no way to trade because they were so used to trading through Russia.

 Izzy: Is Moldova made up of more goat villages, small towns, or big cities like New York?

Mrs Kim: Moldova is made of mostly goat villages and small towns, some kind of big cities but nothing like New York. The country is mostly farmers so there are lots of cows. Lots of cows. Every teacher has a cow for milk.

Tehva: What is the language spoken in Moldova?

Mr. Bill:  There are 2 main languages in Moldova. One is Romanian and one is Russian. Romanian is a romantic language which means it's close to Italian.

Tehva: Do you have any stories from Moldova?

Mrs. Kim: Yeah, actually we do. Well, when we lived in Moldova we lived in an apartment and sometimes they would cut off the electricity and hot water. Now, it gets very cold in Moldova in the winter which is when this happened. So, what we did, was we bought a pickle barrel and an electric coil. Then, we got cold water out of the tap and heated it up with the coil. Finally,we took a bath, a hot bath.

Mr. Bill: Another time, we were at the market and a woman was selling chickens. She had one chicken in each hand. They were alive. She was using them as hand warmers while she sold them.


Later.....
A woman named Felicia came in and told us about Romania, her home. Then she taught us some words in Romanian. She is familiar with Moldovan since Moldova used to be part of Romania. Although Moldova is now its own country, the people there still speak a sort of dialect of Romanian.

You can click on the video link below to hear more from Felicia about Romania and Moldova.

 
   
    

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.  

Some photos from the first quarter...

Service Shots

So here are some photos from quarter one. A new requirement this year is service hours, which I am defining broadly as any work that uses one of the kids' talents and results in no pay. All of their service  hours that they have amassed thus far have been through individual projects. However, we did a school-wide project creating games for a birthday party. Jensen and Silas collaborated on a fishing game. It was a splash (sorry, couldn't help myself). Silas hid on the inside and clipped candy bars onto fishermen's lines while Jensen manned the outside of the game and helped kids cast into the "boat". This suited Silas well as a he hates crowds, and it suited Jensen well because she is a closet extrovert, as you can see.  

Wadi Walks

Once again, we are doing a few wadi walks. We started small but since these girls are HARD-CORE we moved very quickly to the big guns. We were really lucky to have Janet lead us on a wadi walk up AJ Wadi, which we have renamed Cheese Grater Wadi (see nameless student's pants in bottom photo--they are all so modest that I couldn't say whose pants they were, but maybe you can figure it out).

The last push to the end of our walk.

Nameless student's pants. The wadi ate them up!

Zara did amazingly well considering the tread on her shoes was almost non-existent.

And at the end Janet gave everyone a certificate of completion. How cool is that?

 Irish Dance

 Irish dance is almost over because our teacher is leaving us for the Hyatt in Doha. However, because she is cool and has connections, she imported Irish examiners at the beginning of November and everyone did a graded test. Afterward, she had a party on the beach and the kids were awarded their grades and certificates by school. This is the Home School.

Project Work
The Sumeria Project

The idea behind this project was to 1.) teach advertisement techniques used to convince consumers to BUY BUY BUY; 2.) learn and use some of the tricks that advertisers use to make their products look more appealing; 3.) give the kids the opportunity to study intensively one aspect of Mesopotamian culture; and 4.) teach them how to use Picassa for photo enhancement.

Because Silas is a boy (I suspect), he ended up being a model for his own ad and Tian's, which was for Gilgamesh Crunch Cereal--he is Gilgamesh in the shot above. Makes you want a bowl of cereal, doesn't it?

Miscellaneous 

 And this, apparently, is what happens when you are 100% homeschooled. Since Tehva has not been exposed to the big world of public school education, and no one else seems to have this issue with looking like a hillbilly, we must simply assume that the photo below is the result of too much homeschooling. Or something.

More photos to come!

Week of November 16th

Our resolve sticks--at least for this week.

Tian
At co-op we have been following a class on Decopage, taught by Ms. Annie. It's when you take water and white glue and mix them together. Then you take napkins, wrapping paper, or scrap paper and make them into thin layers. You then dip the paper/napkins in the glue and coat the item that you are doing Decopage on.

This week I worked on a plate for Christmas. When it is finished I will post a picture of it on the blog.

Zara
Oh my gosh! Then thing that was so frustrating this week was that my collage of Enkidu, the monster-man from Gilgamesh, did not turn out like I wanted. As a matter of fact, my cats ate it! I know that is such an old excuse, but it's true!

Cady
All I can think about is math and it STINKS! I am working on calculating area and circumference of a circle. Each and every time I did the assignment I got ALL THE ANSWERS wrong! Now I am hating myself for having to do it all over again. Even at this moment, I am still correcting my work. I am able to correct it, though (ed not: and that's a good thing) thanks to a brand new concept called scrap paper and another list I have of eight steps to follow to find the circumference or area of a circle. So I guess that means that I am actually learning it.


Silas
Okay, we made little clay Enkidus. Enkidu is a monster dude from the story of Gilgamesh, which was written in Mesopotamia over 4000 years ago! My Enkidu was really tiny and he had so much hair that he ended up looking like he was pregnant.

I have also learned a frustrating new unit in math about place value up to trillions. There is a way to look at place value where there is multiplication like five times a trillion. Like that. It is amazingly hard, mostly because the lines on the paper are too small.

The best thing I have been doing is writing a story called Super Cat Harry. I have already finished the first story. Now I am writing a sequel.

Jensen
So this week we started studying Hammurabi's Code. The rules are very interesting. When Tian and I discussed punishments that we thought would be appropriate for the crimes that took place in Babylon, it was very funny. The best one was when we had to decide a punishment for a nun who drank alcohol (which really happened in Babylon). We decided that the people would all gather around her and watch her get drunk and then she would feel ashamed for what she had done.  In actuality, they burned her.

Tehva
Today I read Sam the Minuteman and I read the WHOLE book and after I finished I was so tired. It had 62 pages! Then I answered questions about it and I got them alllllllll right. Even the hard ones! The book was about a boy named Sam who went to fight the British during the Revolutionary War. The first time he went out to fight the British, the English soldiers won, but the second time he went out to fight the Minutemen won. His friend John got shot in the leg, too. In this book, Sam learned to fight really really well even though he is like nine or ten years old.

We also listened to Gilgamesh the Hero while we made our Enkidus. Jensen's Enkidu had a stick right through its body and balls of clay stuck on the end of it. It was really really funny.

We will add photos later. Until then the question is, "Will we be able to do this again next week?"