Grocery shopping organized

Yesterday was shopping day: our dreaded, loathed-but necessary, bi-weekly grocery run. Yes, bi-weekly. We have developed a system where one single trip to the grocery store provides three meals/day plus snacks for at least two weeks.

Some of you might ask: Why?

Nobody in our family likes to shop: not for groceries, not for clothes. We don’t get any pleasure out of picking out cereal or choosing the kind of pasta we will have with our ragu. It’s not fun, and I always get stressed out by how much everything costs. Then there’s dealing with the 4-5 men who pack our groceries and expect tips, and worst of all, the taxi situation. Because we don’t have a car, we have to take a taxi to the store, have the driver wait, and then take us back. As you might or might not know, I’ve had bad experience with taxi drivers here in Beirut, and I just don’t like having to deal with taxis - period.

So, how is it possible? How do we go two weeks without entering a grocery store?

First of all, since there’s no way fresh produce would last two weeks, we do pick up fresh vegetables and fruit from Osama’s produce stand a couple of times during the course of the two weeks. He’s right off campus, very friendly, cheap, and has great fruit, herbs and veggies. So there’s that. Everything else though – and I mean everything: meats, grains, cleaning products, personal hygiene, dairy, etc. – is purchased during that one grocery run.

All it takes is a little planning, and I’ve decided that the time this takes is SO worth not having to go to the store more than twice/month. I start with a master list of all meals that will be cooked or prepared over the next two weeks: 14 breakfasts, 14 lunches and 14 dinners. Everybody in the family has to suggest at least one lunch and one dinner each. I also use a list that I have of some of our regular, favorite meals, cookbooks, internet sites, and I write down all the meals on one list, and the ingredients required on another list. To reduce the spread of ingredients needed, we limit meal choices to one or two cuisines – usually one/week. If we plan one Italian meal, for example, we might as well plan several, since often many of the ingredients are similar, e.g. parmesan cheese, flat leaved parsley, tomatoes, balsamic vinegar. This reduced the amount of ingredients needed for the two weeks and hence the cost, significantly. In addition to the groceries, I also walk around the house to figure out if there’s anything else needed, e.g. laundry detergent, soap, light bulbs, toiletpaper, batteries, and write that down.

When I have a list of everything that is needed, I divide it into three: one list for the boys, one for the Husband, and one for myself. At the store, everyone takes off with their own cart – the boys together – and we all meet up at the cash register when everything on our lists has been gathered. This usually takes a little less than one hour, and costs around $400.

The boys always do a great job, and they get to pick out a treat as a reward for their work. Several times their friends have asked why they can’t just stay home while we – the adults - go to the store, and they’re always shocked to hear that the boys don’t just come along, but that it’s something we rely on them to do. (Actually, most of their friends are shocked that the boys have chores that they have to do at all.)

I love coming home with all the groceries, knowing we don’t have to do it again for a while. The first 10 days after a grocery run are the best: the meal choices seem infinite, and there’s a lot of fun food to cook. When we start getting down to only a couple of boring choices though, we might order out one night (which not only spices things up but extends our two weeks with an entire meal/a day), but eventually, we run out of food entirely, and the process has to start over again.

Today though, freezer, fridge and pantries are stocked. So. What’s for dinner?

Welcome home!

Prof. Husband came home yesterday from his week-long conference trip to Scotland with interesting stories and ideas. Getting accepted for a conference and presenting a paper is a good thing in itself, but what I like the most about academic conferences is the inspiration they generate: not just ideas for more papers, but excitement about the field, academia in general, and more thorough insights into other people’s work and thought. My husband also gets to spend time with old and new friends, which is good, since he doesn’t exactly have a rich social life here in Beirut.

It was cold, he said, and it rained a lot. It was expensive too. But he had some really nice meals and brought me back a beer that is to die for: Innis & Gunn, rhum finish. Most of all I enjoy hearing about the people he met though, their lives, stories and families, and of course the ideas that the adventure has produced.

Getting back from St. Andrew’s to Beirut is a bit of an ordeal, involving two buses, a longer train ride and two flights, but his trip went very well – until he got to the Rafik Hariri airport in Beirut. Just before Prof. Husband’s plane landed, the relatives ofthe pilgrims that were taken in Syria decided to block off the road to theairport, preventing any traffic from leaving or entering the airport. So when my husband had got his bag and came out to look for the taxi driver we had arranged, there was nobody there to meet him. There was no information anywhere that would indicate that something was going on, so he decided to wait for a while. After quite some time, he ran into a friend who had just come from Turkey with a friend. They learned, upon calling a relative that was supposed to pick them up, about the chaos outside, and after some conferencing, decided to leave the airport on foot and make it out to the road where their ride was waiting. Zigzaging through blocking vehicles and burning tires, the party of three made it out safely, and my husband’s friends were very kind to take him home.

I was getting a bit worried, yes – he’s usually home within an hour after his plane lands, and now it had been almost three! - when he finally walked through the door I was very happy to have him home.

In pursuit of the perfect Science curriculum

I’ve been starting to think about next school year, making a list of materials that we will need, and how or where we are going to be able to get it. I will have a 4^th grader and a 6^th grader, and one very active pre-schooler to keep busy. Alongside continuing studies in Math, English, Latin and French, we will move forward in History to cover ca. 400AD – the Renaissance and all that it entails, including the development of the church, geographic discoveries, scientific advancements, etc. I have to admit that the Dark Ages was my least favorite time period to study during our last round (four years ago), and I’ve therefore decided to make an extra effort this academic year to spice up our studies.

We will also go all in when it comes to Science, although I have yet to create the curriculum for this upcoming year.

The idea that we have been following all along our home-schooling time suggests you divide Science into four blocks, following the history curriculum, so that you study one part of the subject every year. The first year of the cycle, which involves the study of Ancient times, offers a science focus on Life Sciences, since people during this time were discovering their own body and the living things around them. Then during the Middle Ages, scientists turned their eyes to the sky, discovering planets (Astronomy), and inwards, exploring our earth and all that it entails (Geology). The Early Modern period offer insights into more detailed studies of matter (Chemistry), and finally the Modern period, during year four of the cycle, focuses on modern science; Physics and Technology.

Last year we threw out this division however, deciding that it was too slow; our oldest student needed some physics to go along with his math, and really, since Chemistry is so much fun, why only do it every four years? Also, after you’ve studied the body and cells, you want to turn to atoms, and after your study of rocks and minerals, the periodic table actually seems interesting, but if you wait two years to go there, a lot of knowledge will have disappeared and you can no longer make the connections that would help you remember in the first place. So, we decided that the boys would learn about all four areas of science each year, in quarter sections. We created a great curriculum and had it all planned out.

it turns out however, that when you are used to such in-depth studies at a slow but thorough pace, as we have been pursuing over the past few years, shifting gears to go four times faster is difficult. We only ended up sufficiently covering Life Sciences and Astronomy & Geology, leaving most of Chemistry and Physics hanging. A fair share of this was made up for during our trip to Italy though, where we visited a lot of science museums and talked about the discoveries of the great Italian scientists during and after the Renaissance. There are still a few holes that need to be filled out though, however at this point I’m not sure exactly what or where.

So, it’s a bit of a mess, really. 

Do we try to pick up where we were and cover Chemistry and Physics only this year? This would be absolutely contrary to any plan we ever had regarding the structure of our Science curriculum. We can’t start over completely though with Life Sciences again, because what if we never get past Geology again? I’m thinking we will attempt a quarter session division again this year, but start with Chemistry and Physics, and then try to be stricter with our time. 

What does your science curriculum look like?

Aesop inspired

The older boys had a really good time at their sleep-over and came home with a little basket filled with fresh figs right off the tree. They were bubbling about all that they had seen and experienced, and one of the things they were most excited about was the fruit trees and berry bushes, and being able to go out in the morning and pick fresh fruit for breakfast. It made me wish that we could give them that life: live in a house that has a big yard with lots of fruits, berries and vegetables, trees with swings and a large lawn for sports and proximity to nature, mountains, lakes and rivers. One day.

In the meantime, I am very happy with what we have here: a nice apartment and the sea just across the street. Isn’t it beautiful? (See photo in prior post.)

When work is done...

My perfect view!

Left alone with a boring mama

The Professor left for a conference in Scotland on Saturday night. He messaged me when he got there, “I made it. It’s SO cold!” Summer in Scotland is colder than winter in Beirut, I guess, because he is wearing his winter clothes; long sleeved dress shirt, a knitted vest and dress pants, and he was still freezing. Poor husband. Or not. He’s staying at a conference center in beautiful Scotland, home of the single malts, doing what he loves the most – engage in philosophical discussions with interesting colleagues from all over the world.

Last night the two older boys went with a friend to his family’s summer house in the mountains north of Beirut. It’s their first sleep-over away from home for as long as I can remember. Because of their sleep-walking. talking and night fright issues, we usually turn down sleep-over invitations, but this is a family that we trust, and we thought it was time to give it a shot. The boys are after all older now and they can look after each other. I haven’t heard anything yet, so I’m assuming all has gone well.

As a result, I found myself completely alone with our three-year old for a day and a night, realizing that’s probably a first, ever. Of course I take him out, just the two of us, sometimes, and we spend alone-time together at home, but it’s the first time ever that we were alone in the house for more than a couple of hours. I took him for a long walk around town, we went for ice-cream, spent a fair amount of time reading, had sushi take-out, and then hung out while I tried to work (unfortunately, I have a deadline).

This morning when he woke up, he walked around the house, and then came back to bed with me. (He always spends the morning with the boys.) While we cuddled I asked, “Is it nice to have mama all to yourself?”which he answered with the question, “When are my boys coming home, mama?” Got it. I’m boring and you can’t wait until your brothers get back.

So now we are waiting for their arrival, while I try to work.

Summer indoors activites

If you're not swimming in the sea, it's almost too hot to be outside during the middle of the day, so the kids have been spending a fair part of their summer vacation indoors - A/C blasting - doing arts, crafts, board games, Playmobil, Lego, instruments practice, iPad, Wii... Almost like a Swedish, rainy summer. Minus the rain, of course.

I too, have had to come up with projects in between jobs, and finally got around to setting up a school room. The room has always been there; it's supposed to be a maid's room, but of course we don't have a maid, and in lack of appropriate school room/office furniture we've been using it for miscellaneous purposes, like printing or storage. Over the past couple of months however, we've managed to get our hands on two desks, courtesy of moving neighbors, which made this amazing change possible.

The one thing I've disliked about home schooling the boys here is that because we've only had one table in the past, we've had to clean up our work for every meal and snack. Closing books, marking spots, and clearing the table 5 times/day takes time, is ineffective and boring. With our new set-up, the boys can leave their math/English/science/history/Latin/art books open while we eat breakfast or lunch!

I just need to get some things on the walls - we might still get a shelf from a moving neighbor - posters and pictures, and then I'll post some photos.

Enjoying the Mediterranean Sea

Since we got back from Italy we’ve been going to the beach a lot, almost every day. It’s close (a 5 minute walk), it’s free, fun and healthy, and the weather most certainly permits – between 32°C and 38°C and usually sunny! Sometimes the boys bring friends along and they all play in the pool together, but usually we go just the four of us and swim in the sea. The water has been surprisingly clean and clear. Today we spent the afternoon circling the pier, snorkeling. Abraham has got really good at swimming under water, holding his breath for almost a minute at a time, but today he actually mastered the use of a snorkel, which opens up a whole new world. For a couple of hours he swam around looking at fish, crabs, sea slugs and other interesting water creatures. The older boys were playing off the coral, letting big waves wash them up (the tide was really strong) until August’s back got scraped up so badly we had to take a break and wait for the scratches to stop bleeding. I also put Neosporin on, which I thankfully had brought. It’s not the first and most probably not the last scratch we’ll have to deal with this summer. I look forward to a lot more beach days!

Vacation, all I ever wanted.. Italy; a little more detailed

Whoa! Time went by quite quickly there. I finished up some jobs, washed clothes, packed, prepared the house, and our family was off to Italy.

I went inter-railing through Italy when I was younger, and Courtney and I have been there several times together. We spent two weeks driving around Northern Italy the summer I was pregnant with our oldest, and we also went to Rome and the Vatican for the year 2000 New Year’s celebration. Since then, Courtney has been there for conferences as well. This was the first time we took the kids though, and it was quite a thrill.

We spent the first week in Rome, where we had rented an apartment found online. It was great – the owners were super friendly, and the apartment was ideal, in a quiet neighborhood but with a grocery store close by and very near public transportation; three bedrooms, a well equipped kitchen, towels, blankets, TV (which we never used), free wi-fi. We went sightseeing every day – the Coliseum, Forum Romanum, The Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, churches, museums (including a Leonardo Da Vinci museum), the mouth of truth, a Salvador Dali exhibition, we saw it all! - and then cooked great Italian food in the evenings and/or had dinner at some very nice restaurants.

After our week in Rome we packed all our stuff into a small Toyota and drove north: Sienna, Pisa, Livorno, Lucca, Florence, Venice, Chioggia, Padua, and then south again; Assisi, Pompeii, Vesuvius, and back to Rome, where we spent an entire day at one of the largest shopping centers I’ve ever seen, Porta Roma.

What a trip!!

Most expensive: The bathrooms at Santa Maria Novella (1,60 euro/person adds up!), and the Venice bus-system. It cost our family over $80/day to get around Venice on crowded shuttle boats.

Most awesome discovery: children under the age of 18 who are members of the EU enter most sites in Italy for free. The boys’ Swedish passports were literally worth their weight in gold!

Something bad that happened to us: Nothing, really. Small annoyances, like having to use tokens to shower at a camping we’re already over-paying for, or missing the IKEA exit in Naples and having to spend an hour trying to get out of a dodgy neighborhood, by means of getting on and off the highway several times and have to pay two euro each entry.

Standing in line, in 40 degrees C heat, for over an hour to get into the Accademia to see the David was pretty unpleasant as well.

If I had to pick a favorite moment: In Padua we just made it to our appointment to see the Chapel. If we had arrived 30 seconds later, they would not have let us in. Pheuw!

But then there’s the glass of wine with a view of Umbria – it tops everything. Not because it was an exceptional wine, but for the setting. Let me paint you the picture.

After Venice and Padua we were a bit weary of camping, which entails – among other things,

• having to walk 5 minutes to get to the bathroom (which often doesn’t have any paper or toilet seat)
• no proper showers (in Italy, campsites make you buy expensive tokens to shower, and a session often only lasts for two minutes)
• taking down and putting up a tent, not to mention pump up air mattresses to sleep every night – in the heat
• waking up bathing in sweat every morning, often in the sun
• spending an hour every day trying to fit all our stuff in the rental car, without burying the kids
• eating whatever for breakfast – no tea, nothing cold – ugh!
• dirt and dust everywhere
• no chairs or tables – nowhere to sit and relax or eat.

We entered Assisi pretty late and just by chance found a small Albergo with a family room at a reasonable price, plus, it turns out, a great restaurant, a pool and a terrace with a fantastic view. We had already had dinner but still ordered some antipasti and a bottle of wine. The restaurant had 1 ½ liter-bottles of soda for 3 euros for the kids. What a catch! Sitting down with that glass of wine in my hand, comfortable, clean, cool, on a terrace with an amazing view of Umbria – thinking about how lucky we were to have found this oasis in the middle of our hectic trip – THAT was a good moment.

Number of churches/basilicas/chapels visited: I lost count after 30 – it could be closer to 50. On our last day in Rome alone, we visited four, and that wasn’t on a day we visited the Vatican. Four in Assisi, three in Venice, three in Sienna, two in Lucca, one in Pisa, well over ten in Florence.

Pieces of luggage that MEA managed to lose on our 3 hour direct flight without delays: 1. (How?! you ask, How?!)

Loads of laundry after we got home: 9.

Summer vacation - 2012 - in Italy

Already there and long gone...

Dinner in Assisi with a view of Umbria

Almost there.

I’m so ready to be done with the boys’ work this year, but they still have a couple of things to finish up, including a few math lessons left in their Saxon Math books. I love that program. Most people I know that don’t like it, don’t like it because the lessons are soooo long, and toooo repetitive. I think this is one of the program’s strengths, however this late in the year even I’m getting a bit weary of the many division problems and mixed fractions that keep popping up over and over again. And I’m not even the one who has to solve the problems!

In any case; apart from putting together their grade folders, which I will do when we get back from Italy, we only have a few math lessons left, a couple of pages in William’s special English book, and two more one-day history projects to finish, and we’re DONE.

Almost. There.

Almost. There.

Our school year is coming to an end...

“Do you take breaks? Do you have summer vacation?” someone asked me, related to our homeschooling, the other day.

Well yes, we most certainly do. We take lots of breaks; when we need them, AND during holidays and the summer and whatever. We don’t take AS long breaks as the schools here, since I find that the boys lose quite a bit of momentum and knowledge if our breaks are too long, but I think our breaks are more frequent, and natural – less tied to some external event (like Ramadan) and more dependent upon effort and rhythm. I tried half-heartedly to explain our idea that education does not start and/or stop, but is a continuous process that doesn’t end just because it’s June. We have official “contact days” because we have to, but our school year is in no way limited to these. We do have periods of less intense instruction (between grades, naturally), but when your entire every-day set-up is so very different, the overall structure will be as well. A history lesson in our house doesn’t end when we close the book, but whatever the current topic is, it pops up in connections and comments everywhere. Not only do we relate anything and everything that surrounds us to our learning, but we correlate our family life– as much as we can, of course – with our children’s education. Our family vacation this summer is a great example of this: “incidentally” after having studied ancient times intensely this semester, we are going to Rome. “Coincidentally,” right after finishing up our studies of Pompeii, Ancient Rome, the Coliseum, etc. we are going out of our way, spending our entire summer budget, to visit these sites in Italy.

I’d like to just point out here – for the record - that we are far from infinitely wealthy. In fact, we don’t have money to travel the way we would like to. How are we able to visit Italy? What we do, is make a lot of sacrifices; mainly material. We don’t own anything; no car, no house, not even furniture, really. All our money these past years have gone towards, first, an education of ourselves , and then towards visiting family and/or seeing the world with our kids, along with a focus on their education. This year we sacrifice seeing our family – or at least sort of, since the money we’ve saved up wouldn’t be enough to go to the US anyways, or visit Sweden properly.

I guess what I’m saying is; yes, we take breaks, but not to be all officially school-like, but because it’s normal to have highs and lows. Also, our breaks are… different.

Fruits in season

I wouldn’t call the current fruits in season my absolute favorites (I have this thing for strawberries and gooseberries), but there’s no arguing about it: biting into a juicy, ripe, soft, light sweet peach, or filling your mouth with large, firm, heavy sweet, dark-red cherries is a divine experience. The earth stops spinning for a moment, and everything else fades away. 

Yes, the fruit is *that* good here in Lebanon.

Relocation time (not ours)...

It’s getting to be that time of the year again. After the semester is over, some people don’t just leave for the summer, but for good. The boys are losing a couple of really good friends this year, who are going back to Canada. They are upset of course. They’ve seen these girls almost every day for well over a year, and have done so many things together with them; sleepovers, birthday parties, Halloween celebrations, lazy Sundays, Christmas…

The boys are good at making friends - very good friends quickly - but as expat kids in a community where most people are in a temporary position, they’ve also ended up losing friends, often and quickly. These are what you could call “Easy come, easy go-friendships.” The friendships are not easy as in shallow – in fact, they are often quite intense, since without close family or other networks nearby, you end up spending a lot of time together. This makes the goodbyes very difficult, of course, and it will take the boys some time to adjust to life without their favorite girls.

The boys understand that this is the way it goes though, when you live the way we do. In fact, they’ve never known a different life. Sometimes I wonder what it means and how it will affect them when they are older. Will they have trouble establishing long-lasting, meaningful relationships with people? Will they feel disoriented as they go through life without a solid geographical point of reference?

What is your take on this?

The challenges 1, Jennifer 1

Nope, I haven’t been able to post all that frequently. Almost all my computer time these days involves work exclusively (yes, with a glance at Facebook here and there). We have been planning our summer vacation – our upcoming trip to Italy – and seeing the budget that we will have to have available is a great incentive, let me tell you, to make some extra money. So I work as much as I can. Sometimes it’s exciting – I just read about something in the news that I had translated the presentation for – and sometimes it’s a little less stimulating and very technical (heavy machinery equipment maintenance manuals, anyone?) but it’s really a great job - it is! - because I can work when and where I want. Also, my new laptop is being quite cooperative, which makes everything a lot easier.

Well. Other things happen in our lives too, of course.

Prof. Husband went to Turkey for a conference for a week. Now he’s giving exams and writing a paper that is due around the time we get back from Italy (which means he has to finish it before we leave). This means he has been and will be pretty much OOO these weeks. Sigh.

The boys (and I with them) are working hard to finish up this academic year’s school work; finalizing projects, filling out gaps, reviewing. We’re of course also going over the history of Italy –covering all areas, including art and music - extra carefully, in anticipation of our trip.

Abraham has gone through a few weeks of some kind of Terrible Threes Project, where he spends a lot of time trying to make a mess, as big as possible, and then when you start cleaning it up, he takes off and makes an ever bigger mess, somewhere else. We’re not talking little spills of milk in the kitchen here, but more exciting endeavors such as soaking an entire clean and folded but not yet put away batch of laundry in the sink, or pouring out a big tub of wooden blocks and then running through them, kicking them and spreading them all over the house in under 10 seconds. Another favorite is opening as many packages of pasta as possible before mama finds out, or getting a juicebox out only to pour its entire content over the couch. I’ve therefore spent a lot of my time lately cleaning up messes and trying to entice Abraham with more appropriate activities, like painting, play-doh, duplos, peg art, or I sit with him and his toys, and show him how to play nicely, by example, and put things away afterwards. The boys are also teaching him the first pumsae, which I think is good for his body-mind connection and coordination. In all, I don’t think it’s an attention-thing (he gets a lot of attention from all of us), and I don’t think he’s bored. I think he has just been exploring his independence and testing borders, a bit, to figure out what he can get away with, what is appropriate, and what will put him in the much-dreaded time-out. Whatever it is, I hope it passes soon, because I’m getting tired out…