News

We have been struggling with transition, so we revamped the schedule to give the day a little more flow:

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The New Scheule

9:15 – Come in and choose a station (snack is available in the studio)

• Math
• Explode the Code
• Journaling
• Games

(Everyone visits each station)

11:30 – Outside is available

12:00 – Story/reading time with Michelle

12:45 – Lunch with Paul

1:30 – Stations available + other classroom activities (special art workshops)

3:00 – Closing Circle

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We are also taking a break from any war play as well as play on the hill (the hill will reopen soon.)

Letter #2 From Travelin’ Grandma Diane

Salom Boys and Girls,

I’m writing this from Esfahan, Iran, and I want you to know I been passing out pictures you sent me. I’ve taken picures of the children they’ve been given to, to share with you when I return.

However, I am going to start this first e-mail with boarding Northwest/KLM for Amsterdam, about a ten hour flight. Whew! I started on Monday afternoon, and arrived in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning. I have purchased some homeopathic jet lag pills, and even though it was somewhere around 1:00 a.m. in Seattle, but 8:00 or thereabouts in Amsterdam, I didn’t feel jetlagged (groggy and as if I was in morning sunshine at the wrong time.)

Holland is a very small country, and totally flat. You can drive from one end of Holland to the other in two hours! Two hours won’t even get you from Seattle to Portland!

The airport was so quiet and people moved at a leisurely pace. There were no constantly repeating loud speaker announcements like we find in American airports. I don’t know about you, but I usually quite listening to being told to watch my bags, what I can and can’t take on the plane, and whatever they talk about in our airports. And it was very nice to find things so peaceful and quiet.

That is one of interesting things about travel, you get to find out first hand how people live and do things in other parts of the world first hand.

We had ten hours in Amsterdam, so we took the train into what is called Amsterdam Central. When we left the train station, after figuring out how to change American dollars into Euros, we were facing a canal. We took a streetcar type train to go the Rijks Museum and crossed over canal after canal. It was very pretty. The Dutch people ride bicycles, not the mountain bikes and fancy long distance bikes we ride and see in Seattle, but bikes with large wheels (not balloon tires), mostly old and beat up, and hardly ever locked up! The bikes were lined up all over the place for this is how most people get around in Amsterdam. How clever, no fumes, no smog, and bicycles take up much less space to park.

(I know Isabel, this is probably pretty boring, Grandma going on, but I can’t show you pictures yet, so bear with me!) It was 48 years since I had been to the Rijks Museum and I had two paintings I wanted to see, A Woman with a Pitcher by Vermeer and Night Watch by Rembrandt. I’ve got postcard pictures to show you when I return. And yes, my favorites were still there, this time in much more elegant and appropriate framing, and cleaned of hundreds of years of dirt. In the case of the Night Watch, what I saw 48 years ago was a big big very dark and boring painting with only a couple faces showing. In the 70s they had cleaned this famous painting, and now it was filled with people all doing something interesting with Rembrandt’s unique way of have light seem to come out of a person’s face!

It was Tuesday, after lunch, and the museum and nearby park was filled with Dutch people leisurely enjoying their city! Marci, the friend I’m traveling with and I couldn’t get over how crowded the public places were. In Seattle, the museums and parks are empty of people until Saturday when folks are off work! This is what I mean, you learn how other people live differently than you do back home.

Back on the plane, more homeopathic jet lag medicine, and around almost 2:00 a.m., Iranian time, the lights came on, the plane landed, and I donned the blue coat (I had dyed it a darker blue because we were told dark colors were more acceptable), and tied on my scarf along with all the other women. Turns out I didn’t have to cover my bangs all up after all, the rules in Iran are not as strict as they were.

There is a fascinating story about getting through customs, being fingerprinted, waiting a long time, but I will wait to tell you that story when I see you in person.

At last we got to our hotel, figured out the unusual system of getting lights to turn on in the hotel room. You have to put your plastic “key” card in a slot, and then when you push the light switches, the lights come on. If you take out the key card, in a very short time, the lights all go off! One way to conserve electricity.

Tehran has I believe 10 million people. Gas here is very cheap, 10 cents a liter. After all, this is an oil producing country. So everyone has cars, the roads are very crowded, and Tehran, which sits in a valley, is pretty much covered in smog. However, on the day of our first outing, we drove up into the mountains surrounding Tehran and had a lovely clear rare view across the valley over Tehran.

On Iranian weekends, Friday is like our Sunday, and the weekend extends over roughly three days, these totally barren mountains, no trees, will be filled with people, men and women and children climbing into the mountains. On the other side of the mountains (which we couldn’t see) people come up in the winter and go skiing. This winter was particularly hard in Iran. Our guide couldn’t get out of his house for two days because of the snow that was piled up outside his door! The winters are quite cold here, spring, the season we’re in now a comfortable warm/cool, and summers and falls very hot. We are in a desert climate.

By now, my blue coat was feeling very hot, the scarf I had worn to your classes was quite warm, and none of us women looked like what we look like without our scarves! The men in our group were in shirts, some short sleeved and looking cool and comfortable! Many Iranian women were wearing long black chadors, like a loooong scarf that covers you from head to feet. Others in a manteau, a coat that comes in all kinds of stylish looks, some even of light colors, and scarves of fabrics like silk. Today as I write this, wearing the scarf feels more “natural” and seeing women in the covers like I just described seems much more natural and normal.

I’m going to stop here as my group is gathering to go out today. There are many more adventures to share.

Khoda hafez, Traveling Grandma

(Goodbye, or Allah go with you)

Letter #1 From Travelin’ Grandma Diane

Dear Girls and Boys,

I enjoyed visiting your classes very much, and seeing how much you’ve
grown since I started out last fall as Galapagos Grandmother. Your
pictures and writings about yourself are just awesome. I look forward
to sharing them with people in Iran.

Tomorrow morning between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. I am supposed to get
my passport and Iranian visa delivered. They better get there then
because I leave for the airport at 10:30. I’m supposed to hear the
story of what happened that it took so long to get them through
Iran’s process when we get there. Whew!

I reread about the need to wear dark colors in Iran, so the light
blue coat you saw me in, along with the scarf, have died a darker
blue. I’m curious to see what it will be like to wear a buttoned coat
and scarf all the while I am there.

I am taking your questions to ask people. I hear the weather is quite
nice. And, the adventure is about to start!

Travelin’ Grandma Diane

100 Days