We’re having stunning fall weather this weekend. Jan and Lyn make the most of it with a pleasant morning walk through Saint Edward State Park in Kenmore.
Liya’s enjoying her remote sculpture class. Liya’s sculpture teacher, Bill, is probably the girls’ only teachers who has entirely reinvented his pedagogical method for his remote classes. He explained that he wasn’t sure how he could possibly teach a sculpture class remotely. He usually has his students work with wood, glass, and metal — all of which require a well-equipped studio. Over the summer, however, he came up with a form of sculpture the students could do from home.
The students create sculptures using 3D forms made from paper. They print out templates for these forms from a site with a huge collection of 3D shapes in paper form. After cutting out the templates, they fold and glue them according to the instructions, and end up with a 3D shapes. They then apply a thin layer of paper maché to add strength. They then glue the 3D shapes into a larger sculpture, and finally paint the whole thing. The results can be interesting — remarkably so for something built with easily-available materials and assembled in any home.
Liya makes one such sculpture, and receives some nice words about it from Bill.
Jan goes for a day hike in Sun Lakes – Dry Falls State Park, a wide canyon pocked with lakes and giant rocky landforms. A couple of years ago, he and Bree looked out over the park from a viewpoint along the cliff on the canyon’s western edge, but at that point, we didn’t know it was possible to go hiking down inside the canyon.
His first stop is Deep Lake, well away from the park’s entrance. Although it’s a beautiful day, the park interior is empty of people. From the lake, he cuts across a rise over toward Umatilla Rock, a long, tall, knife-like ridge of rock cutting through the north half of the park.
In between the park’s lakes, the ground is extremely dry, but at one point there’s a natural spring feeding vegetation. Jan surprises two deer near the spring; they stare for a few seconds before bounding away.
Jan cuts up and over Umatilla Rock, then stops for lunch by Perch Lake before heading back to the car.
We celebrate Lyn’s birthday with dinner at our house. We usually have Jan’s mom, Lyn, over for dinner on Sundays. We’ve tried to our best to host a dinner safely: we wear masks indoors until we’re sitting down to eat. We extend the dining room table, with Lyn at one end and the five of us towards the other. But with the increase in COVID cases and the increased risk eating indoors, this will be the last family dinner for a while.
After a nice dinner, Lyn opens gifts, including an interesting lamp Liya made for her.
Anya likes to cook at night. Jan and Angela have been trying to discourage the girls (mainly Anya) from making noise in the kitchen after 10:00 pm. This doesn’t stop Anya at all, although she at least is doing her best to keep things quiet.
Although the kitchen was clean and the sink empty yesterday evening, this morning Jan and Bree come downstairs to find a full sink: 3 cups of tea, a bowl of appears to have been pickled ginger, the coffee grinder, a panini press with bits of grilled cheese stuck to it, a brownie pan, another (unused?) brownie pan, and another bowl of pickled ginger.
Anya finds out that she’s going to Taiwan in January. The State Department-run NSIL-Y program has been trying to arrange for the students that were supposed to be in Taiwan this year to travel to Taiwan in January. Today Anya finds out that — for the time being — it looks like they’re going to be able to do that.
Anya’s thrilled. Not only will she get to meet her classmates and teachers in person, meet a host family, and get to do all kinds of interesting activities — she’ll also be able to go about all that in a country that’s successfully managing the global pandemic. She’ll get to ride in subways, go to restaurants, walk alongside friends in crowds, and go to museums and other culture sites. We’re jealous.
Happy Thanksgiving! All things considered, the five of us have a very nice Thanksgiving dinner. There’s turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffed acorn squash, and two different pies for dessert.
After dinner, we have a family video call with Jan’s brother, sister, and mom. While it’s nowhere near as nice as being together in person, it is nice to be virtually together for a bit and catch up.