Laurel Academy

I'm not sure how it happened, but all of a sudden we are beyond phase 3--post-phase!--and into what is still being called "la nueva normalidad," which I won't translate into English because of how much I hate the phrase. But here's what it means: we have no more time zones for approved motion around town and we are free to travel within our province, within our region, within the country, and, I believe, within much of Europe. Businesses and restaurants are pretty much open now, but with limited capacity. Masks are required in public places, indoors and out. But things are sort of back to normal. Well, at least I think they are. We didn't have enough time here before things got abnormal to gauge what normal really means, but I'm led to believe that it's sort of like this.  But to me, things are weird. For example, there aren't menus at restaurants. In some cases there are QR codes to scan at your table to access the menu on your cell phone, but som...

First, thanks to everyone for reading these updates and for encouraging me to keep going with them. I  read your comments, but for some reason Google won't let me respond to them (either that, or, more likely, I just haven't figured out how). But I appreciate them and try to write back. Now onto more important things, namely, the cockroach. I am very, very pleased to report that there have been no further cockroach sightings. We sprayed both bathrooms thoroughly and put a couple of traps in the bathroom where the little guy made his appearance. Even with these precautions I was not comfortable in the bathroom for about a week. Minimal showering on my part occurred that week. After a good number of days without a sighting I figured it was safe to start showering again, but I don't think I'll walk barefoot in the apartment ever again. The days here have been sunny and warm but not too warm and we've taken some nice walks, although I have not yet done the Orwell t...

As I've said before, I try to focus mostly on the positive elements of our Spain adventure, but this morning there's nothing positive to be said (except the sun is shining and the purple trees--jacaranda is the consensus--are even more purple than before). Last night I saw a cockroach in the bathroom. Matt tried to do away with it, but it disappeared into a crack between the floor and the bathtub. Will, who had been mentioning at least once a day that he wants to go home, is now up to several times per minute with this message. I sort of see where he's coming from. We're hardly allowed to leave the apartment and now we have to share our space with this thing? (And who knows how many more there are down there...) The one good thing about the cockroach is it makes the silverfish look cute in comparison. We will deal with it. I had been sort of expecting this visitor since I noticed an almost-empty can of cockroach spray in the laundry room a couple of months ago. It's...

We are now almost two weeks into "Phase 0" of Spanish deconfinement. After almost two months spent entirely in our apartment, it's been nice to get outside and walk the city during our allowed hours. The first photo below shows some pretty purple trees from one of our walks. I thought that we had missed all of the flowering trees this spring while we were stuck inside, so I was excited to notice these. I don't think I've ever seen such a strong, deep purple on a tree before. I have no idea what they are, but they're gorgeous. I can see one of these trees from my bedroom window. I look forward to watching it come into full bloom! The evening walks have also allowed us to explore different regions of the city and exercise a lot harder than we've been able to inside. I was getting pretty tired of walking back and forth the length of the apartment hundreds of times per day to work up a sweat. Now we have three evening hours to get in our exercise and we have...

For school, the kids have been reading and discussing newspaper science articles. In this post, Ryan reviews two articles that we especially enjoyed. --------------------------------------- This post is a review of two articles on the covid-19 disease and its spread through the world. These articles are unique in that they include simulations and animations that provide much better understanding of covid-19. The first article is called " Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to 'flatten the curve.'” It was written by Harry Stevens and published in the Washington Post . This article shows graphs and statistics of the different ways to counteract the spread of covid 19. In their article they have 4 different ways to counter the disease. They are: doing nothing, quarantining the infected, partial social distancing, and full social distancing. There were graphs to represent the number of sick, healthy, and recovered people in any small a...

I haven’t posted much lately mostly because I simply don’t have much to say. We ran out of cute new ways to spend time in the apartment a while ago, although we have continued to enjoy playing ping pong, making music, etc. I have been reading a lot more than watching TV recently. I read Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner, which was an enjoyable and well-written memoir of a non-tech person’s early career at a couple of tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. I am now working my way through a biography of the author Shirley Jackson by Ruth Franklin. I read Shirley Jackson’s most-famous story, The Lottery , in English class in middle school I think. I didn’t like it and didn’t think much about Shirley Jackson after that. But Matt knows I like biographies and he heard about this one and gave it to me as a Kindle book and it is fantastic. It’s slow-moving and detailed, which I like in a biography because it lets me get to know the subject better. We’ve also been doing a lot of schoolwork with the ...