Babel School in Taiwan

It's hot - very hot - too hot to do anything but sit at home or in the swimming pool. Of course it's not too hot for a summer camp at Juming Museum. And that's exactly where Jas is staying this week. Before the camp he had to prepare a piece of art work with his favourite scenery. This is what he (and Zosia) came up with: Do you know what it is? It's one of the lakes on Mazury, that we go to almost every year while in Poland. After four days we went to pick Jaś up from the camp. This year's theme in Jaś' group had something to do with water... Jaś introducing his group's project   Great-aunt and ... Ama, Agong also came to see Jaś at the last day of the camp. Zosia is still spending a lot of time at the ice-skating rink  preparing for next week's competition in Thailand.

Almost a week has passed since I got back with Jaś from Poland. Can't say we went there for vacation as neither the weather nor the activities were holiday like. Most of the time we've spent getting the new apartment ready for guests. We painted the whole place by ourselves and bought some new furniture and kitchen stuff. It turned out very nice. Remember to let me know if you are planning a trip to Warsaw, maybe you can stay there ... As always we drove to Bydgoszcz to visit relatives. But for Jaś much more fun was a visit to Szumin near Warsaw and to an open-air museum in Sierpc. In Warsaw the only interesting place we went was the new science center for kids - Centrum Nauki Kopernik Jaś with his cousin, Ania. We also met with some friends who we know from Taiwan. With Łukasz and Kamil.  

A few weeks ago Zosia was asked by Juming Museum 朱銘美術館 to share her experiences from summer camps she spent at the museum with other people.  The task was not easy as it was supposed to show something that has changed her or sparked her interest in something.  What has she come up with? Of course - photography! At one of the camps kids were asked to take pictures while rolling down the slope, to look at things from a different than usual perspective. And that's what she has started doing - Zosia's photos always show everyday things but from a different angle.

We haven't managed to finish this project before leaving for Poland, but it still took us many long hours to get it to the stage it is in now. (My great big THANK YOU goes to Jessica from Homeschooling in Heels for providing her templates for others to use.) Here is what we've done so far:

Tim had an alternative schooling conference from 10th to 12th of June. He was one of the main organisers so he had to be there for whole three days from morning till night. On the day I left for Poland Tim had another 'seminar'. This time it was about homeschooling in high school - the law allowing for kids to be homeschooled during the high school years has just been passed. Tim seems to be the only one who knows how the new law works and what is the application process. That's why he met with families who plan to homeschool in high school.

We had a very busy weekend: Saturday, as always kids had dance classes, but this Saturday was also June 4th - the Tiananmen 天安門 'incident' anniversary. Chinese writer-disident, Bei Ling 貝嶺, who is living now in Taipei and whom we know, has organised an art instalation/happening entitled "1001 chairs for Ai Weiwei 艾未未". Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist who, on the way to Taiwan last year, was stopped at the Chinese airport and detained. He is still being held without a trial. The happening was interesting, but hasn't drown a big crowd. But still - kids and Tim got to the front page of the newspaper  On Sunday after church we had friends over for lunch and afternoon tea. They will be leaving Taiwan soon and going to Canada. We will miss them ... On Monday was a holiday - Dragon Boat Festival 端午節 so it was a great day to organise a big Polish-Taiwanese party at our place. Again we were saying good-bye a our friends who will be moving to Australia. Th...

  While mom was reading me a 100 year old (really!) Polish history book, I was drawing a pagoda with Paint. This is one of my most successful pictures...                                                                                                                 by Zozo

The following post is by Zosia: Last week mom gave me a large stack of worksheets. Some of them were taken out, some were copied from different workbooks. All were about the human skeleton and bones. It took me two days to fill them all in. When I finished the last one, mom gave me two blue A4 sheets with a human skeleton printed on them. After I cut Mr.Bone out and labled him, I wondered how to put him together. There were few options: either glue him on a piece of paper and make him a paralized Mr.Bone or somehow connect his joints and make him a super flexible skeleton. Anyone who knows me will bet I chose option no.2. Well, no matter how much he bet; he won. I chose to have Mr. Bone's body glued to a big piece of white paper, leaving his mechanical cranium (skull/head) and limbs dangling (if you're not moving them with whatever force). I thought for quite long how to attach the moving limbs to a thin paper. I tried using tacks to secure them but that onl...