The Fine Art of Fasching

Fasching is a wonderful, but totally incomprehensible, German holiday. It starts in November, rolls to February, coming to a head around Mardi Gras season. Fasching seems to be mainly marked by a larger-than-life presence of totally inappropriate adult "costume" wear just adjacent to the children's toys in Globus (German Target). The children even get to participate in Fasching at school, which involves eating remarkable amounts of candy and kuchen at school, whilst your parents, dressed as pirates, etc, drink champagne and eat appetizers. Sounds perfect, right?

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A few months prior to our school's weekend and weekday Fasching activities, the kinders started a unit on...pirates. The extra bonus of this unit of study is that JillyBoo started dressing up like Keith Richards, and we read a lot of wonderful books, such as Peter Pan and the Eyewitness Pirates book. The latter elicited the response, "Uh, mom, aren't there any nice pirates?" No, not so much. I did learn that Blackbeard used to make himself primitive beard extensions that he lit on fire, resulting in a frightening smoking effect. He was punk before punk was cool.

Overall, Fasching seems to be an opportunity for the locals to let loose before lent. It is refreshing to be part of a community that allows people to have fun and be raucous...with in reason, of course!

Inspiration

We've been so busy lately that even sitting down to listen to JillyBoo read has been a seemingly overly exhausting task. Finally, this weekend, things slowed down enough for us to do some laundry and consider what topics inspire us to learn. For the last 3 weeks, JillyBoo has not been inspired by her achievements in violin, groaning when I even mention a Twinkle.

After a long weekend on the island of Malta, we were relaxed, but our house was in chaos. While visiting the Mediterranean island nation, we had the totally unexpected opportunity to explore a site described in Homer's Odyssey. Really? I couldn't believe it!! I've often lamented that I didn't attend a public high school good enough to present senior with the Iliad and the Odyssey. I do appreciate, as an adult, that I can earn the education that I feel I didn't receive in my youth, and that my enthusiasm for learning can serve as a springboard for my daughter's education.

On one of the Maltese islands, Gozo, there is a site called, "Calypso's Cave." Calypso was a goddess so entranced with Odysseus that she socked him away in a cave for 7 years, only letting him go after Hermes informed her that Zeus was not too thrilled with their living arrangements. The word cave makes you think of a, you know, cave, so it would surprise you to know that the Gozitan cave, one of the six possible sites for the location of Calypso's cave, is more like a hole in the ground!