Homeschooling Update

Both Dani and I are continuing to thoroughly enjoy our role as Lielle's new teachers.... and Lielle seems to be a very motivated student! The system we have adopted is a semi-structured one where we give Lielle a range of subjects to choose from and she organizes her time-table each evening for the next day. Hot favorites are still English and Cookery, but she is also regularly choosing Geography, Science and Nature Studies. Maths is incorporated into the time-table with ongoing games throughout the day and her writing and reading skills are merged into the other subjects that she chooses. Without even trying she is learning more and more Bulgarian every day too.

We try to connect all the various subjects to each other so that everything has relevence. Today was a great example: Yesterday we noticed our neighbour working hard in her garden cutting maize (sweetcorn) and we offered to help her. At 9 o'clock this morning we turned up for work (but she wouldn't let us start until we had eaten some home-made bread and plum jam!) We spent a good couple of hours helping out. It was great physical exercise for Lielle, as well as a real fun and hands-on way of learning about how corn grows and what it is used for. When we came home we gave her a page of questions to answer relating to what she had learnt that morning and she also wrote a short account of what we did there and how much she enjoyed it. We finished off the days' studies with some artwork using paint and corncobs and leaves - all in beautiful autumn colors.

At the moment we are spending around 3 hours each day on homeschooling, but our aim is for Lielle to become a more independent pupil as she masters reading and writing, enabling us to spend less time one-on-one with her as she gets on with many of the tasks by herself.

A few days ago her day began with Cookery and Sport followed by English and Maths. You can check it out in this video clip on Lielle's Blog www.liellesblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/school-of-life.html

Voditsa Garden Opera

Lielle loves singing and dancing and has recently been listening to music from the the opera 'Carmen'. While humming some of the tunes to myself as I was working in the garden the other day I remembered how when I was a young girl we had a family game, usually while on a long car journey, where we would take the tunes from this famous opera and make up new words....

Inspired by this we made our own little Voditsa Garden Opera .... it's very short, and in Hebrew but describes the abundance we feel here and our wish to share. Enjoy!

(A rough translation to English: Here in Voditsa we have a garden with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers - green and red! Come eat, share and enjoy!)

The family is reunited!

Dani arrived five days ago! He surprised us all when he showed up at the village about 6 hours earlier than we were expecting him having sussed out all the various transport options from Sofia. Since he arrived hungry one of the very first things we did was to show him the garden and he picked himself a salad. There is nothing quite like eating fresh food from your own garden that has been picked only minutes before! Check out the video above.

We have already got stuck in to a few of our projects: Together we have almost finished the mud-plastering in the entrance (more about that soon), and Dani has painted over the wallpaper in the guest bedroom to at least give it a nice fresh clean look. The time just whizzes by between working, preparing food and eating. We still have the bigger projects ahead of us: dismantling the old summer kitchen and making seating areas outside, organizing the compost toilets and shower room... the list goes on ... but we are doing it all bit by bit and by the end of each day there is always something to tick off the list, however small.

Now Dani is with us we have decided to establish more of a routine to our day and have started off this morning with a bit of homeschooling. Dani is teaching Lielle maths and after lunch I shall sit with her to learn about the upcoming Rosh HaShana holiday and make cards to send to the family back in Israel. The idea is that she will become more of an independent learner and will be able to get on with many of the subjects by herself. Watch this space!

Let's get this show back on the road!!

It's rather strange that the whole reason for setting up this blog was to document our year away 'living the alternatives' and that only now, six whole weeks after leaving our old lives behind, have I got around to writing about our experiences so far. Since leaving home Lielle and I have immersed ourselves in our new experiences from morning to night, leaving me very little energy come evening for sitting down and writing about it all.

The original plan was that Dani would take a week or two after our departure to tidy up his work affairs and would then be joining us, but the weeks rolled on by until.... TODAY! We received a surprise phone call a few hours ago telling us that he is on his way right now! While Lielle and I have both loved the laid-back time schedules and holiday atmosphere I think that we both feel that the time has come for a little more routine and to start getting stuck into some proper work, both projects on the house and with the homeschooling.

So, a few updates since the last post:

* Never underestimate how important it is to have backup copies of all your important stuff on the computer! Shortly after we arrived in the village I spent several hours right into the night editing and filing photos of our trip. I must have been really tired or just generally disoriented but when I thought I was deleting an empty folder the computer asked me: "Are you sure you want to delete these 34,867 items?" Silly me assumed that it was the computer that was wrong, so I hit the 'yes' button and it prompted me with: "Are you sure you want to proceed as these are too many files for the recycle bin and will be permanently deleted?" I clicked 'yes' once more ... and within seconds saw all my 6 years of family albums flicker and disappear before my very eyes. When I checked out the file that I thought they were all in and found it empty I was devastated. I was never so thankful that I had taken the time to transfer all my photos and personal documents to an external hard disk, although unfortunately all the new photos of our visiting friends on the way to the village were lost. Some of them were able to be recovered when I was introduced to a program that can be downloaded from the internet to recover lost files - but I had left it too late to recover them all. Still, I've learned a good lesson.

* We must be the world's worst (but luckiest) when it comes to leaving things until the last minute. Lielle's passport arrived via France just two days before we left. The even better news is that since we left home it has been confirmed that I was due for severence pay from my last job which I held for around 14 years. The pay has already been put into my bank account and should provide a safety net for the project. Although we knew the project would be very low budget we also knew that it would be impossible to live without any money at all. It's very good to know that we shan't go hungry and can afford the travel costs between our various destinations.

* One of the last things we did before we left home was to spend a few hours on the beach watching the sun go down with the children and the grandchildren. These precious family moments are the ones that I shall most treasure and they make me realise that, with all the learning we shall be doing this coming year, the main thing is to learn about ourselves and each other and to relish living in the moment and being in each others' company.

* Now that Dani is on his way (he should be sitting on the plane right now waiting for take-off!), I am hoping that I shall find the time and a few quiet moments every few days to keep this blog properly updated. I have so many ideas in my mind of things to write about and share.

Final countdown - Only One Week To Go

This past month has just whizzed by. With so much to actually get done I have barely had time to sit down and write about it all. Now, with only one week (almost to the hour!) before we leave, it's time for a quick update:

• All our 'memories' (old photos, letters, kids' art, etc.) are all packed and stored. I decided in the end that there just wasn't time to make memory boxes for the kids as I had hoped. Never mind, that will be an interesting and nostalgic project to look forward to when we come back home, together with converting all our old family videos to digital format for future editting.
• I finally got around to sorting out my old computer and transferring all the files to an external, portable memory. It amazes me just how much of your life (documents, photos, favorite music, etc.) you can fit in something the size of your back pocket!
• Applying for Lielle's passport is a work in progress. We're hoping it'll reach us before we leave as new arrangements in the British Consulate meant that it needed to be processed in Paris. Fingers crossed!
• The last couple of weeks has been a time for saying goodbyes to friends. I spent a wonderful evening with 5 of my dearest girlfriends. The intimate atmosphere of such a small group generated such good energy and I have a lot of exciting projects to look forward to with them on our return. A couple of evenings ago we held a farewell, sushi-making get-together for our Couchsurfing friends. I feel truly blessed to be part of such a wonderful community. This whole plan of ours for a year of travel and personal exploration would never have happened without it.
• One of the highlights of this past month has been learning paper mache together with two good friends - and making two new good friends in the process, Tami and Uzi, who run the course. Wednesdays mornings have been something to look forward to as, in addition to learning a new skill of making beautiful and useful items out of waste paper, spending a couple of hours in such an intimate and open forum amongst trusted friends is just so good for the soul.
• After some uncertainty, we finally received confirmation that one of my elder daughters, son-in-law and grandson will be taking over our rental contract and moving in to our house. The furniture arrived a couple of days ago and they should be moving in tomorrow. Although a little cramped for two families it's only for a short while and we all gain from it. It's the house where my daughter spent a big part of her childhood and she has fond memories of it. For us it means we have somewhere to store a few things which is a big load off our minds.
• I sometimes wonder just where my faith that everything will work out fine comes from. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts our trip is very low budget and even now, just a week before we leave, we're not exactly sure where all the funding will come from. This last month has seen a few interesting developments in that field. A chance conversation with my daughter-in-law brought to light that I should have received monthly child benefit for Lielle, which for some reason we never received since she was born. I checked in out, and sure enough, somehow or other we had fallen between the cracks and within just over a week my account was credited with the amount due to us over the last seven years! Also, looking through all my old paperwork I discovered that I was owed severence pay for a job I had 12 years ago - a couple of hours in two different offices was all it took to arrange the money owed me there. It turns out that there are millions of shekels owed to people who don't realize their rights. Definitely worth checking out.
• Although Dani has been working hard to tie up all the loose ends of his business it's becoming clear that he won't be able to join Lielle and I right at the beginning of the trip (the part where we travel from Greece to Bulgaria visiting friends along the way). The plan is that around 10-14 days after we leave (about the time we arrive in the village) Dani will be joining us. I must say he doesn't seem too perturbed about it. That might have something to do with the fact that those days are the final ones of the World Cup ;-)

Well, that's a rough update of things we've managed to achieve since the last post here. I still need to sort out health and travel insurance, and at the end of the week we have the Young Entrepreneurs' Workshop that I'm organizing for Lielle and her friends. I shall be attending a couple of evening paper mache sessions in a last effort to finish a couple of projects that I've started; and another evening I'm spending with my son Yair and his friends from the Rimon School of Music as they wrap up the end of the school year with music performances in a well-known Tel Aviv cafe. And last but not least, I really want to spend a quiet early evening surrounded by my grandchildren watching the sunset over the beach. A few weeks ago I was at the beach with them early evening and just as we were about to leave my little grandson, Israel-Shalom (almost 2), hypnotized by the sunset looked at me and said, in beautiful Hebrew: "Wow, what a beautiful sky!" I just had to sit down with him and enjoy it. Those moments are so precious.

The Tooth Fairy

One of Lielle's top middle teeth fell out last week giving her that charming toothless grin appeal so typical of 7-8 year olds. This was her third lost tooth - the lower middle two both fell out within a week of each other last summer in Bulgaria. I remember how excited she was then about the tooth fairy and how thrilled she was to receive a small gift and a little note.

This time round she asked me straight up if there really is a tooth fairy, or if it's the parents. I could sense that she really wanted to know the truth, but that the truth might not be what she wanted to hear. It reminded me a lot of the Father Christmas dilemma in my own childhood. Suggesting that she put the tooth under her pillow, I kissed her goodnight and promised that we'd see what happened and talk about it in the morning. I knew that this would be the last time that she, and I, would be experiencing the magic of this particular aspect of childhood naivety.

I could hear her fiddling about for some time in her room before she finally settled off to sleep. When I crept in just before midnight I found a little handwritten note next to the tooth:

"Dear Fairy, Do you know a fairy called Julie? I believe in fairies. When you take my tooth you can take the little bag too as a present". Along with a 10-shekel coin I left a little note thanking her for the gift.

Lielle woke us up excitedly at 7 am, the coin and note in her hand, and with a cheeky grin and a knowing look in her eye she said: "Ima, this looks just like your handwriting!" So I smiled and admitted that maybe there is a fairy called Julie, and when she insisted, I showed her where I had hidden the tooth, the bag and her little note.

It was interesting to hear the excitement in her voice as she realized she was now a party to one of the secrets of the grown-up world, but at the same time just a hint of disappointment at the realization that that particular part of childhood innocence can never be brought back.

Amongst the challenges that face us during this coming year of homeschooling will be helping Lielle become more independent, more 'grown-up', while at the same time preserving the balance and giving her ample opportunity to enjoy a wonderful childhood. I think we're up for the challenge!

Belt-tightening

Although our planned year away is very low budget there are still certain things that will need to be paid for: food and transport are probably the two main things. Over the past year or so we have surprised even ourselves at just how much we have been able to reduce our monthly outgoings in preparation for the trip. Here are some of the ways we managed to spend less (you'll notice that some of the 'decisions' we made were actually fate-induced), for instance:

When one of our cars was written off in a traffic accident we decided the time had come to make do with just the one we had left. And it wasn't so difficult. It did mean planning a bit more in advance so that we could each get maximum use of the car with minimum inconvenience to the other, but all in all the biggest difference we felt was the positive one of less petrol, insurance and repair bills. Several months later the other car suffered damage beyond reasonable repair, but this time good fortune stepped in and one of Dani's children who had upgraded their car agreed to loan us their old one until we leave. Although the ongoing expenses remained the same we are now thankfully relieved of the problem of selling the car at the last moment which is a big plus.

Similarly, a few months ago our second hand washing machine broke down and needed an expensive repair. My daughters who live nearby offered to help out and do our washing for us which is greatly appreciated. In order not to overload them we do some items by hand and are much more aware of only washing clothes that really need it. It's suprising just how much less washing we generate now than before. This has not only saved us having to buy a new machine, but has also caused us to adopt habits that will serve us well during our year away.

After becoming annoyed at the ever-growing cable TV/internet bills for less service we decided to cancel them. Not having the living room dominated by TV has been a big plus in itself, and the internet has been covered by using it during breaks at work, or picking up local wifi signal at home.

Other areas where we just decided to cut down (for varying reasons from "it's not that difficult to do", to "it's ultimately better not just for our bank balance but also for our health/the environment, etc") include: drinking only tap water (instead of bottled drinks) and cutting down on water usage in general by watering the garden with 'grey' water from the kitchen/shower and only flushing the toilet if there's something really offensive in there. None of us family members is offended by the others' urine, so when it's only us at home this saves a lot of pure drinking-quality water being used to simply transport this natural waste from one place to another. The water rates in general have recently been increased a lot and we have noticed a big difference in our water bills compared to our neighbors.

Some of these changes were achieved by a simple shift in mentality. Once you have set a goal in mind that you are passionate about, if that goal involves money to be saved or debts to pay off you actually psyche yourself up to get a thrill out of not buying something. Resisting the urge to buy something actually gives you a buzz as you realize it is in your power to bring that ultimate goal one step closer.

It also helps to look on the bright side and see the positive aspects in everything: cars and washing machines breaking down don't immediately strike people as being positive, but the way things worked out these things not only brought about a reduction in our expenses but also made us super-aware of just how kind, generous and helpful people can be.

Family Friendly Travellers' Rest

... that was the title of a message that I posted on the Family Welcome Group forum of Couchsurfing almost 14 months ago!

The post was quite long but here is a short extract from it:

"....So what is this dream? - I would like to create a space, in rural Bulgaria, where people traveling with children can stay and share their experiences and skills. It would be a cross between couchsurfing and volunteering. No money would change hands, but there would be an exchange of skills and resources. Children could feel at home enjoying the simple life in the village. Parents with skills such as arts and crafts, story-telling, music, dance, languages, drama, cooking, photography ... (the list is almost endless), could share them, enriching us at the same time. I envisage that local children from the village would also become involved, making for a lively and interactive cultural exchange. Maybe we could provide computer / internet services that would allow long-term family travelers to take some time out for making a digital scrapbook, or editting video clips along the way?

Right now these are ideas whizzing around in my head and giving me a great feeling of excitement. I would love to hear other families' feedback.... "

I got some great feedback which was all the incentive I needed to push the idea forward - and this blog is the result.

For a more detailed description of just what we can offer and what we hope to get in return you can check out our 'participate' page.