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

Summer plans

OK, that’s it for the weight loss blogging. I won’t bore you with it for a while. In the meantime, let’s talk about this summer.

For a young professor with ambitions, the summer is normally the time to write papers or books – publish – and to visit conferences. Every summer for the past four or so years however, Professor Husband has taught extra summer classes instead to earn extra money so that we could visit our family in Sweden and in the US. Eight weeks of hard work has been enough to – together with savings - cover the cost of our tickets and give us enough to travel and spend a few weeks with our family.

This year we have decided to put career first however, and Professor Husband will not be teaching the summer, but spend the time getting publications out and finishing his book instead, which is due in September. This means we will not be able to visit any family, which is sad, because two years, not to mention three years, between visits is so much longer than one year, and far too long in general. We miss them.

As not to be completely stuck in our apartment all summer though, we are thinking about using what little extra money we have to travel to Italy; go on an actual family vacation, like a normal family. Not that traveling to visit family isn’t fun, but it’s not exactly a sightseeing, culturally enriching, educational, vacationing kind of experience.

Italy will tie in very well with our current studies, and to be completely honest, it’s the closest destination (cheap tickets) we can think of that will grant us a bit of a break from the Middle Eastern culture. Don’t get me wrong; I love the people here and in Egypt, and the culture is fascinating, the politics interesting, to say the least, the food not bad, and art, history and architecture captivating. It’s just that it’s very different, and challenging, and I feel I can appreciate it better if I get an injection once in a while of the familiar, western life that I am more accustomed to. Just that. So we are thinking about going to Italy for a couple of weeks.

End of the summer...

I am sitting in my mother’s garden in southern Sweden. It’s windy, cloudy, but a comfortable temperature. I can hear the boys playing in the forest, enjoying their last week here. The days are getting shorter, the nights are colder, and it’s getting time for us to head back to our real life, in Lebanon. Work, school, sports activities, choir rehearsals, dinners, dishes, laundry, play dates, the beach, and everything else that is part of our life in Beirut awaits us. As does moving out of our beautiful apartment across from Idriss in Hamra, and into a great apartment on the AUB campus, into a community, right next to the playground.

I am well rested, almost a little weary of the quiet, slow and uneventful life here that I long for at times during the busy school year. I am ready for some action! Days filled with activities, work and fun, friends, and exciting new developments. I even look forward to moving. It is a lot of work but it will also make for a fun step in our life; socially, health-wise (we’ll have immediate access to the sports facilities), economically things will lighten up a bit, etc. Good things will come.

Kids out of control...

The boys have been playing with kids here in the village where we’re staying in Sweden, and have made a few friends, which is great. The bikes I bought for the boys off Sweden’s version of the Craig’s List at the beginning of the summer have provided the boys with a lot of freedom. They bike around the village with other boys and can go to the school playground whenever they want, without me having to bring them. It’s our first summer with this kind of independence for the boys. They are big boys now and I trust them. I know that they know to be careful on the bikes, that they know how to behave at the playground and towards other children, and that they are nice to others and look out for each other.

What I have no influence over however - as I’ve come to realize – is how other children act. William was at the school playground playing soccer with a bunch of kids, and when he was getting ready to leave, putting his helmet on to bike home, a boy came up to him and threw a handful of wet sand straight into William’s eyes. Twice. Somehow he managed to bike home, and I heard his cries as he locked his bike outside. When he came inside his eyes were totally covered in sand and he was rubbing them ferociously, screaming from the pain. Courtney and I tried washing the sand out as best as we could with water. It’s an amazing creation, the body, and how fantastic its defense system actually is. Your eyes will produce very large amounts of phlegm to lump together and expel foreign objects. It took us a while, but by bedtime William had a fairly clean, albeit very sore eye. It was red and extremely sore for a couple of days. You could see the cornea was scratched. We gave him Ibuprofen and kept a close eye on it (no pun intended, ha ha). Finally, three days later, William’s eye is much better.

My summer boys...

Summer fun

 Abraham  plays in the backyard. Sometimes I get a glimpse of the older boys as they ride by the house or come in for an occasional drink. Warm and sunny summer days are good.

Backyard fun...

Enjoying our Sweden vacation

My mom’s house is situated in a small community in the farmlands of southern Sweden. Right behind her house is a small forest with a biking path that if you follow it past some houses leads to a small playground. There’s a store, a pizza place, a bank and a public tennis court next to a soccer field. It is the ideal place to spend a few summer weeks away from Beirut.

Our first morning in Sweden the boys and I went for a long walk along the old railroad tracks. The sun was shining from a blue sky, and the beauty of the lush, deep dark green trees and fields, along with the sounds and sweet smell of clean nature, was almost overwhelming. We picked wild raspberries and cherries and ate, admired the beautiful wild flowers, saw butterflies, snails, birds and other little creatures, and enjoyed just being. August and William said it was the best morning they had had in a very long time, and Abraham was bubbling with a strain of joyful comments.

Summer travels at last

After a lot of work, beach time and some illness, I finally found myself zipping up our bags, all packed up for our trip to Sweden. The only flight available to us was a 3 am departure from Beirut, with an early morning stopover in Prague. We left for the airport sometime after midnight, not having slept since the night before. All went well, and the boys fell asleep almost immediately as soon as we got on the plane to Prague – in fact, they slept the entire flight. I managed to sleep a little – I think. I used to be able to sleep sitting up like that, but now… Maybe I’m too big to get comfortable? It was unpleasant to say the least. When we got to Prague I couldn’t wake Abraham up and I had to carry him off the plane and through the airport. The older boys were sleepy but very good and great helpers. We only had about 40 minutes until our next flight, and because of all the passport and security checks at Prague airport, that’s barely enough time.

When William passed through the security check it started beeping and a police officer came up to search him. When he was standing there with his arms out, the police officer padding him all over, William burst out with a smile on his face , “Oh nice. Free Czech massage!!” After only an hour or two of sleep at 6:30 am, he could still crack me up.

Our second flight was short and we got all our bags fairly quickly. Then we took a train to cross over to Sweden (a five minute train ride cost 20 Euro!), where my mom picked us up and took us home. I don’t usually nap, only under very special circumstances, but I guess this qualified because I had a little sleep in the early afternoon with Abraham. We spent this day in a jet-lagged haze eating the Swedish treats we had missed so, and catching up with family.

We're going to Sweden this summer!

Amidst all the chaos and budgetary trouble, we concluded that whatever has or will happen, we can’t live through another year in Lebanon without a break. We need to see some family and a western… anything. We need to be able to order school books and other necessities. Since the US is out of the question budget-wise, and since we always have a great time in Sweden, we purchased tickets to fly to Copenhagen. The boys and I leave right after mid-July, and Courtney will follow when his summer classes are done. We will stay just past Ramadan, missing the entire event this year. As soon as we get back, it will be time to move. Yes, I know; crazy!!

Swimming in the Med...

The boys have spent most of their "after-school" under water these past couple of weeks. I've been wanting to get a picture of everyone at the beach, but it's hard when all I see of the older boys is their snorkel tubes sticking out of the water, and when I constantly have to prevent Abraham from drowning by pulling his head out of the pool. Here are a couple I manged to snap, however, between events.