Nora writes the songs

So Nora has recently taken up songwriting, perhaps spurred on by her newfound love of pop music. Here's some of her recent gems:

I'm an open book
Chorus:
Open me, open me
Find the answer to your question
in me! Look hard, read more and don't give up.

I'm an open book find your answer
in me. Try try your hardest!
When you find the answer you have truth so write it down!

(Chorus)

Math questions, geography questions, and
much more! Find all the answers
in me! It's the truth that you find in me!

(Chorus)

Learn more, get a good score!
I'm an open boooook.
LEARN MORE.

If I could...

If I could I would fly and be a star like you.
If I wanted to I could try.
But I've tried too many times.
Help me, help me I want to become a star like you!
How how how do you do it?
I've tried and tried so many times it never works.

Chorus:
If I could I would be a star like you, but all you say is I'll never be a star.
Oh, please please help me.
I don't know how.
Take me with you!

I don't want to be my plain old self all over again!
You help me because I helped you!
Help me with my dream!
It's like you didn't want me to help you in the first place.
Keep your promise.

(Chorus)

Family

(Chorus)

The family plays with you on rainy
days the family makes you laugh when you're sad
try try try to help them too.

Have fun play games
do crafts with family
read books with family
not alone
learn a new language with family not alone

(chorus)

With your familyyyyy.

Check back later for more original songs!

An interview with Nora

N: It’s been a long week. I’ve been more tired and bored than ever.

M: Why?

N: Because I’ve been doing lots of things at schools, and taking walks forever, and I had the cross (a cross-country race for all kids in the city 3rd grade and up) on Friday. And it just seems like there’s nothing to do around here.

M: I thought we agreed to stop complaining.

N: Yes, but this is a blog post. And, I didn’t hear you saying that.

M: OK, no more complaining. What else are you up to?

N: I have three exams next week. And I’m going to start a unit on Futbol in gym, a new unit in science, and probably start a new unit in math. In math we’re learning now about angles and lines.

M: This is boring.

N: Fine. I’ll change the topic. What should I talk about?

M: I don’t know. Just don’t bore me.

N: (Giggles)

M: What kinds of competitions do you want to be in next year?

N: Art competition. Piano competition. Gymnastics competition. Futbol competition.

M: Can we dress you up in makeup and a big poufy dress and put you in a beauty pageant?

N: NO WAY. First, I don’t like big poufy dresses, and I wouldn’t wear makeup this young. And what’s a beauty pageant?

M: Where girls compete to be named the cutest one.

N: Oh. That’s weird. I’d rather be in a fashion show, not one of those pageants. But what I would like to do is be in a sport competition or an art competition or a competition where you don’t have to dress up all fancy.

M: And what is it you’ve been saying you want to do when you grow up?

N: I want to be a gymnast, an artist, a fashion designer, a soccer player, a pianist.

M: OK, let’s wrap this up. I have to go give your tiny brother a bath. Go get your lyrics.

We're still here...

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. We've been traveling (Jon: Santander, Virginia; all of us: London and Oxford) and that's meant less time for discretionary activities. A new Spain-related post is in the works, but in the meantime, a couple quick milestones:

A) I arrived at the bread store today to find them out of my favorite variety, and almost completely out of bread in general. However, even though the crabby brother was manning the register, he reported something along the lines of "I tried to set aside some gallega for you, but my brother sold it to someone else." So I guess that means I'm a regular.

B) It's spring! Actually, it's been spring for about 3 weeks already--we saw our first flowering trees at the end of February, and the temperature has been in the 60s and 70s for a couple weeks. Given that the last leaves dropped off the trees in December, it seems awfully early--or maybe my New England soul just can't handle less than 5 months of winter.

For the record, winter in Madrid this year was three weeks of heavy wind, gray skies, and relative cold (40s), surrounded by endless weeks of sunny 50s. Our Madrileno friends tell us that this isn't normal ("Only two weeks of ski season!!"), especially the dryness.

More once Jon gets back and life returns to normal!

Seth’s chestnuts from tonight

(From before dinner): “If you behave at dinner, I’ll give you candy.”

(After dinner, during an altercation with Nora): “Nora! Go to your room!”

(At bedtime, after being warned not to talk to his brother who shares the room): “I can’t control my talking.”

More travel!

After spending the weekend in Madrid, I left Monday afternoon for another trip – this time to the Netherlands. I’ve initiated a work collaboration with a colleague there, and we decided to get together for a few days for an intensive work session. In addition, I was invited to give a talk at a university there that is home to one of the world’s leading institutes for research in mathematics education.

I am writing this entry while on the plane back from the Netherlands. I really like the Netherlands. There is so much to appreciate – the country is socially liberal, environmentally responsible, amazingly bike friendly, and full of sincere and generous people speak English! I had a really great time. I tried to ‘go Dutch’ as much as possible, in that even though the weather wasn’t great (rain sprinkles most of the time), I borrowed a bike from the hotel and biked to/from the university from the hotel and to/from where we ate dinner each night. 

Although I have spent time in Amsterdam (which I like), this time I was in Utrecht. It was relatively small, full of canals and beautiful old brownstone-type homes. And of course, bikes. It is difficult to accurate estimate the number of bikes that are on the bike roads and locked in bike racks everywhere – there are just so many. In front of the one university building where I was working, there were easily 200 bikes parked. And at the central train station in Utrecht, I would estimate that there were easily 2,000 bikes parked – no kidding. The Dutch have invented new technologies for biking that seem to be unrivaled elsewhere. All bikes have a built in rear-wheel lock – you stick the key in and turn it, and the rear wheel is locked in position. (Most people also use a secondary lock that is more like US bike locks.) There are amazing bike racks – double and triple decker to hold lots of bikes. (At the train station, the bike racks were sort of like airport parking garages – with different levels and labels so that you could remember where you parked your bike.) There are bikes that hold people or children in front and/or in back. There are dedicated roads, bridges, and traffic lights for bikes. Each day as I biked to the university, I would see all sorts of people arrangements on bikes – college students riding two to a bike, a parent biking his kids to school – somehow squeezing 3 small kids on his bike. There are lots more bikes than there are cars, so the cars basically yield to the bikes. As a result (and also because the countryside is completely flat), no one where bike helmets. I didn’t see any car vs. bike confrontations; the biggest danger is bike vs. bike. When you cross the street on foot, you have to look both ways to cross the bike road, then look again for the car road – and the bike crossing is much more hazardous.

I also did my usual grocery store tourism, which I like to do everywhere. I enjoy walking through grocery stores in other countries to see what people buy and eat. My favorite new food from the Netherlands was stoopwaffles, which are sort of like waffle caramel cookies - they are really great. Of course I saw and ate lots of great cheese. I learned that Gouda, Edam, etc. are just cities in the Netherlands, so there really isn’t a such thing as “Gouda cheese” in the Netherlands (because lots of different kinds of cheese would be called Gouda cheese, since they are all from the town of Gouda.) I also learned that apparently what we call “Smoked Gouda” cheese (which is one of our favorites) is actually not smoked cheese at all but just “old” Gouda. Apparently smoked cheese is a completely different thing – the grocery store that I was in did not have it. But “old” Gouda cheese is great and is exactly what we tend to buy under the label of “smoked” Gouda.

And last but not least, the main airport in the Netherlands (Schiphol) is also one of my favorites. As shopping goes, there is a great variety (as opposed to the same duty free store and the same bookstore, just repeated every few gates). There are also several good food-court-type restaurants. It is well signed and easy to get around. And there is free Internet for an hour or so. It is easy to get in and out of the airport – a main and huge train station is connected to the airport, with even more shops near the train platforms.

Overall, it was a wonderful and quite full 3 days in Utrecht – the Netherlands is right up there on my list of favorite places in Europe. Now I’m home in Madrid with no travels for about 1.5 weeks, and then I’m going to the north coast of Spain to give a talk at a university up there and hopefully to explore a bit.

My trip to Moscow

I’ve been a bit absent on the blog recently – I’m thankful that Heather has been much more on top of things. While last semester felt quite relaxing (very sabbatical-ish), I (by my own design/fault) have been much more busy since the beginning of 2012.

One of the projects that has been taking up a decent amount of time is related to studying math and science secondary teacher education in other countries. I’ve been peripherally part of a group that seeks to make cross-cultural comparisons about math/science teacher education for several years, but only now has there been a need to do any work as part of the project. (I guess it doesn’t help that I volunteered to be in charge of some aspects of the work...)

But one of the perks of this project is the opportunity to do some travel. And last week was a rather significant perk – I had a work trip to Moscow for the better part of a week. This was my first trip to Moscow, and I was very excited. I was traveling as part of an official US delegation – sort of like I was part of the US government (specially the US Department of Education). (The #2 person in the US Department of Education was also part of this delegation – who is a very nice down-to-earth guy.)

The first step in traveling to Russia was getting a visa. Given our experiences with getting a Spanish visa (see earlier blog posts), I was braced for the worst. Had I been in the US, the US State Department would have handled/facilitated my visa application for me. But since I was in Spain, I had to do things myself. This included navigating the website of the Russian Embassy in Spanish to make an appointment and going downtown to the Russian Embassy with (what I hoped was the) necessary paperwork. Upon my first visit, the Russians were not able to find my name on the list of official of attendees to the meeting and thus they turned me away. A few calls to the State Department in DC and another appointment later (and with only a couple of days to spare), I was issued a visa. 

On the whole, it seemed a bit surreal to be traveling to Moscow – I guess my teenage memories of the Soviet Union and the Reagan-era remnants of the Cold War were pretty strong. It didn’t help that I received repeated and dire warnings from the US Government about precautions I should take with my electronics while traveling to Russia. These included leaving electronics at home if at all possible and not using any of my normal passwords or email accounts (for me, traveling without electronics was not possible – I needed to travel with my computer for work and my iPhone for, well, I just needed it, although I did bring my ‘spare’ computer, on which I deleted all personal information and documents, updated my virus protection, and changed all of my passwords to be super-duper-strong). Instead, I was to create a temporary email account (e.g., a new gmail account) and only use it during my travels. The US government delegation members were not allowed to bring computers but instead were issued new computers and phones by the US Embassy in Moscow upon arrival; these phones and computers were subsequently wiped after the conference ended. The Harvard computer security folks that I spoke to felt that these precautions were a bit over the top and alarmist – who knows. But it is noteworthy that, just a couple of days after my return to Spain, the following article appeared in the New York Times, suggesting that these concerns were perhaps justified.

Read the article

(I haven’t noticed anything weird upon my return to indicate that my electronics were somehow compromised, but who knows...)

There were two other factors that had the potential to impact the trip. The first was the weather. Europe was/is in the midst of a pretty extreme cold snap. In Moscow the day before I arrived, the low was -10 (°F). Even if I weren’t used to the relatively warmth in Madrid, this was COLD! And second, Russia is in the midst of political upheaval right now. Elections are coming and there are demonstrations frequently. The day before my arrival, there was a huge demonstration in Red Square. So it was shaping up to be an interesting trip!

I took an evening flight, through Munich, and landed at Moscow’s DME airport at 3:30 am. Taking the evening flight somewhat lessened the time that I was away from Madrid, thus slightly reducing the number of hours that Heather had to solo parent. In addition, arriving in the middle of the night was a way to minimize the impact of traffic on my travels in Moscow.

As I had been warned, and it is very true, traffic in Moscow is a complete nightmare. During the communist era, the government had tremendous control over all aspects of Muscovite’s lives. The government knew exactly how many people lived in Moscow (in the city, in different sections of the city, in the surrounding areas) and exactly how many cars needed to be on the roads. The highway system was built with these precise figures in mind – the government kept the number of cars to a minimum, only allowing as many cars to be made, bought, and sold as the roads could handle. But now that things have relaxed quite a bit, the population and the number of cars in Moscow has exploded and continues to grow at a fast rate. This means that most roads, most of the time, are bumper to bumper. The DME airport is about 30 km from downtown Moscow (about 19 miles). It routinely takes about 2 hours by taxi to cover this distance. By arriving in the middle of the night, my taxi ride from the airport to hotel was very smooth and took only about 45 minutes.

The conference itself was not especially exciting, although I did enjoy interesting conversations about math education and math teacher education with old and new friends from Singapore, Thailand, Korea, and China. In addition, my presentations seemed to be well-received.

Because of the cold, I wasn’t able to do as much sightseeing as I would have in the summer. But I still got to see some amazing sights, particularly the Red Square area (the onion-domed St. Basil’s Cathedral is really stunning in person – much smaller than I thought it would be). I also went to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts – at least the section that had the impressionist paintings. This museum has quite an amazing collection of impressionist works, all displayed rather plainly and without much fanfare. For example, there is a beautiful Picasso there that recently went on tour. I saw it when it was at the Prado in Madrid, and the Prado made a big deal of it – sort of a special one painting exhibition, complete with special posters and signs, etc. But in Moscow, it was just one of a handful of Picassos on a rather plain wall. There were also a handful of Van Goghs that I don’t think I’ve seen in person that were great.

Because I didn’t do a ton of sightseeing, I tried to soak up the culture in other ways. For example, riding the subway was a very interesting experience. The Moscow subway stations are really beautiful fancy buildings, ornately decorated with fancy trim on the walls, columns, sculpture, etc. Imagine the nicest old parts of an old train station such as Grand Central or Union Station, but in every single subway station. Navigating the subway was challenging, since all of the signs were written in Cyrillic. I also went to an open-air market that sold all sorts of trinkets and souvenirs. I resisted the urge to buy one of those cool furry Russian hats but did buy each of the kids their own little nesting doll.

I also had some wonderful meals. I had borscht just about every night. This was my first experience with borscht, and I loved it. Not long ago, I used to say that the only foods that I really didn’t like were beets and sweet pickles. With respect to beets, I have no memory of trying and not liking them, but I just didn’t eat them. But while living in Michigan, I ate fresh roasted beets and realized that beets were very yummy. I’ve since been a beet lover but have never tried borscht. The borscht I had in Moscow wasn’t really beet-y; it was a rich beef broth with some thinly sliced beets. I’d like to try to make it one day in my kitchen. I also had very good stroganoff, a dish whose name I can’t recall but is basically meatballs inside dumpling and is eaten in a light chicken broth soup. I had very good brown bread, especially bread with these relatively large and very strong caraway (I think) seeds. I had several different kinds of other soups that were great – Russians seem to like to eat lots of different kinds of soups.

And of course, I had lots of vodka. I was never a big fan of vodka. But I had vodka that was served ice cold and was extremely smooth – it was great. I went the relatively cheap vodkas as well – and they were still nice. Interestingly, I noticed at several restaurants that, instead of ordering a bottle of wine, tables would order a bottle of vodka. The waiters would bring the bottle of vodka and one of those wine chiller buckets, and they would put the vodka in the wine chiller. The calculus of ordering a bottle of vodka just didn’t add up. I usually was out to eat with 2 or 3 other people. Unlike a bottle of wine (4 glasses per bottle), there are about 10 Russian-sized shots of vodka in a bottle. I didn’t think we could handle that much vodka!

I celebrated my 46th birthday during my trip to Moscow. It was a fairly ordinary day, with meetings and presentations at the conference. I was able to have a nice workout at the hotel fitness center and a nice dinner with colleagues (including the singing of “Happy Birthday” in English by representatives from the US, Korea, and Russia.

For the same reasons that I chose to arrive in Moscow in the middle of the night, I also left at a similarly ridiculous hour (my flight left at about 6 am). Because of worries about traffic (even in the middle of the night), the shuttle wanted to pick me up at 1:30 am. I got a couple of hours sleep before I had to get up and go to the airport. The taxi ride again took about 45 minutes. My flights home went smoothly and I arrived back in Madrid at about noon local time. Overall, it was a really wonderful and special trip!

The Rube Goldberg machine

So we ended tonight's '80s dance party with the kids' favorite music video, the OK Go Rube Goldberg machine (OK, yes, it's not from the '80s, but they love it). They spent the rest of the evening discussing physics and making a Rube Goldberg machine out of household toys. Here's the product:




[p.s. any recommendations for a new camera welcome!]