Winter solstice, races, GI problems and other quick highlights...

Yikes, where did the week go. I'm going to commit a blog faux pas and wrap-up some updates all at once.

Dan ran a race on Sunday with his intrepid Viña runners' group. We tried to go cheer him on, but the race route is always unknown to at least Dan, if not most runners beforehand, so we didn't find him. When we asked how he did, he said that he thought pretty well, but difficult to know for sure as no one is quite sure the exact distance of the race (somewhere around 8 kilometers in a smoking 36 minutes - a veritable blur!!!).

Theo's soccer team played another team last week. We sent Theo with some teammates in another dad's car to this other school and then Gracie and I went with some other parents and kids by bus. It was a good game 5-6. Theo's team lost by a point, despite Monte Alegre's cheering section having the vuvuzelas, drums, cowbells and whistles in full swing again! The third and fourth graders played well!

Grace and Theo are in the middle of end of semester exams. Every other day they have an exam on a different subject. Today they had lenguaje (Spanish language), so they have been studying about verb conjugations (no easy task in Spanish), parts of speech like sustantivos, verbos, pronombres, adjetivos (nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives), and other grammar in Spanish. Its pretty cool.

Gracie is also going to town on her recorder for her music class. She has got "Ode to Joy" down, started sounding out "Oh, Canada" on her own and now her music teacher gave her the notes to "To Dream the Impossible Dream". The recorder in my opinion is a far cry from the piano, but I'm glad Gracie still gets to play music this year.

As for me, I had a bit of a relapse and came down with Theo's stomach virus right after my cold, which allowed me to continue to be a slacker for a couple more days. By Saturday, I was very glad to be up and about again just in time for "Noches Luminosos" - some fun light shows for the winter solstice here. Theo has asked to blog about that...so I'll leave it to him. Then on Sunday, after failing to find Dan on his race route, the kids and I did happen upon the May Day parade equivalent for Valparaiso - with lots of music, traditional dancing and costumes, stilts, huge puppets, and lots of political slogans. Maybe I can get Grace to write more about the parade! Lots of fun.

Well, there's some quick highlights of the week. Hope you are all well.
Fondly,
Laura