There’s always a bug peeking around the corner.
This is actually the driveway up to the indoor pool where Ouest trains. It’s a beautiful place situated on the top of a hill overlooking all this empty land. We’ve only gotten to see the train come by a couple of times, and thought it was really pretty with the dark skies threatening rain all around while the sun was still shining down on us.
First day of school. Ever. The kids are going to a small private school with about a 50/50 mix of locals and expats and bilingual classes. There’s only about 15 kids per grade, so by the time school started they already knew half of them and it was pretty chill. Kind of a weird feeling seeing them go off. This was their choice, so there wasn’t any, “Do I have to go?” Ouest was looking forward to it, and Lowe was basically, whatever.
A couple of weeks later I asked Lowe if school was what he thought it would be. “It’s easier than I thought it would be, and longer. Honestly, though, I don’t get what everyone has been learning for the last ten years.” His fear had been that he’d be behind his classmates, and he was surprised to find that he wasn’t. I was happy to hear that my view of school, especially the early years, was correct. If you spend time with your kids, explore the world, pursue different interests, and read to them, they won’t be idiots. These two slipped right into 9th and 10th grade without skipping a beat. Feels like they got a ten-year cheat code.
4 Comments on “That’s a First”
As a former teacher I was delighted to read your comments about the kids’ first day of school! I hope parents following your blog get this message:
“If you spend time with your kids, explore the world, pursue different interests, and read to them, they won’t be idiots. ” 🙂
The word “educate” means to bring forth the potential within. What better way than by experiencing the world & learning about various cultures?
We’ve met so many young couples in our travels telling us that they need to give up traveling as they’re now having kids! I always give them your website as an example of what is possible as a family! Keep up the good news & thanks as always for your beautiful photos!
As a very conventional parent with now adult children who loved absolutely school I would say that until age 12-13 exploring the world, being read to and having access to books as well as other media will give kids everything they need to be educated and have some good degree of cultural literacy ( this includes music, movies and tv shows in my opinion). After that age, literature and history can still easily be studied outside of conventional school. Higher level Mathematics and some sciences are harder to replicate and a child drawn to those topics who is intelligent (but less than a true genius…who may be more able to do some of this on their own ) likely needs a more typical school environment to gain the level of knowledge and experience ( chem lab work for example) in those fields if they would like to pursue them.
So many VW pictures. When are you going to admit that you want one and just do it?
man, do youself a favor and buy a bug