Commencement

I love that graduations are called commencements. It is true that Sarah is finally finished with High School (can you hear the cheers from all the way over here?), but the real significance of finishing is getting to start something new. So goodbye ISB. Goodbye HS Drama. Goodbye Family.

And Hello the rest of my life...

love that smile!

The End

This is the Acropolis. I think the scaffolding has been there since ancient times. Everywhere you go in Europe you find scaffolding. I know it really shouldn't affect the wonder of a place, but it really does. It means that something needs to be fixed, and wonders of the world shouldn't need to be fixed. They should just be. This is a temple. I don't remember whose, but it is a nice view. The whole ancient complex including the Acropolis is just surrounded by a sea of modernity and cheerful chaos.
We had to cut our visit short. One member of our party made a mad dash down the hill looking desperately for a bathroom.

The site was thereafter dubbed "The Acrapolis." Nice, huh?

Our last stop was the small fishing village of Katakalon. We decided to skip Olympia and the final wonder in favor of strolling, baklava, and internet. Fabulous baklava.

Everyone was pretty happy to sit in the sun and rest. We loved it.

The End.

Remember that Cruise?

Ok, I know it was two months ago, but I can't let the last three stops fade into oblivion. So here are the absolute hightlights from the grand finale: This is the amplitheater at ancient Ephesus. Built in the first century AD, it could hold 25,000 spectators.
I was really into the columns. One of the craziest things about these ancient sites is that they pretty much let you crawl all over everything. I guess they figure that if it has withstood 2000 years of weather and plunder, it can hold up to the Passeys.

Anna and Sarah fit right in with the Greek Goddesses.

This was my favorite building--the Ancient Library of Celsus. Look and those columns. I could have been really smart in there.

The Temple of Artemis, one of the ancient wonders was destroyed by Goths around 400AD. We liked Ephesus anyway.

Two more wonders to go...

Back to Work

Have you ever noticed how important momentum is? There are definitely some physics laws that explain this phenomenon. But physics aside, I find momentum an important aspect of blogging. When I get in a good groove I find something to post about pretty much every day. However, you may have noticed that I have been struggling with inertia lately. My kids are starting to bug me about the absence of new pictures. I was informed last week that I needed to get the pigs off the blog. I hear and I obey.

Tomorrow...

Further Morning Wonders...

Last week we had lovely swirling petals on our way to school.

This week, pork.

The back streets are getting more and more interesting all the time.
Happy Tuesday

Pink Snow

The city of Brussels has been putting in a new tram track between our house and school for about a year now. I think the new tram track is a great idea. I think closing three lanes is a bad one. Consequently, I have been exploring the back streets. Brussels is not designed like a Roman city with strait, orderly streets. It more closely resembles a wad of string that has spent too much time in the back of drawer and has collected an impressive quantity of lint, dust, dirt, twisty-ties, and stray hairs. Brigham Young would not approve. So, exploring the back streets as a time saving measure is a risky proposition. It does, however, have it's definite charms as we discovered on our way to school last week. There is a tiny neighborhood hidden away that must at one time have been factory housing. Hundreds of identical brown cottages with identical green shutters line the narrow streets in a convergence of quaint that is sometimes hidden in biggish cities like Brussels. The best part of this neighborhood is the profusion of cherry trees in full bloom. We happened to drive by on a blustery morning and it literally looked like we were in a snowstorm--a pink snowstorm. I don't know if you can see the petals falling in these pictures, but the air was full of swirling, floating pink and there were drifts in the yards. It looked like someone had gotten happy with a giant container of pink frosting. Plus, we missed the traffic and got to school three minutes early. Nice.

Jiggity Jig

Matthew and I are back from Florence. That statement was preceded by 23 hours of travel time which included amazing BO, stomach flu in the ranks, very tired but spectacularly civilized children and a little itinterary deviation.
I never before realized that when your night train is 40 minutes late leaving Italy, that puts you in the middle of Swiss commuter traffic which necessitates being sidetracked (literally) for 40 minutes while the Swiss get to work. And when you are sidetracked for 40 minutes in Switzerland, that means that the Italian train can only take you as far as Dijon before it needs to turn around and go back to Italy. And that means that you have to pack up 120 twelve year olds on 15 minutes notice and jump on another train that will take you to Paris, but not to the station where the buses are waiting. So of course the buses have to drive to the new station, which is really so much more sensible than taking 120 children to the buses. However, because the buses have been waiting so long, the drivers are entitled to a 45 minute smoking break and the teachers are a little bleary eyed, and the DVD player doesn't work and we are under no circumstances letting these children off the bus because heaven only knows how long it would take us to round them up again, and so, it only took Matthew and I 23 hours to get back from Florence.

It was completely worth it.