The First Day of School!

Monday, August 29th was the first day of school at Rock Creek Forest Elementary School where Daniel (5th), Eli (3rd) and Micah (all-day kindergarten) will all be attending this year. Grandpa and Micah went to the all-purpose room for a very brief kindergarten assembly and meet-the-teachers time while Daniel and Eli went directly to their classrooms. All went well. After today all three boys will ride the bus to and from school, getting on and off at the nearby Oakland Terrace Elementary School. (So, with plenty of time alone at home during the major part of the day, Grandpa has lots of time for projects!)

After school the bus arrived at Oakland Terrace shortly after 4:00 p.m. Marta was home from Montgomery-Blair H.S. in time to meet the boys. Obviously I had to go along in order to snap a photo or two for Grandma Nancy, far away in Malaysia! - rw

Work 4 weeks & then a 6 day "weekend"

This year Hari Raya, which is the the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, and Merdeka, which is Malaysian Independence Day, are on Aug. 30 and 31. The Malaysian government also declared Sept. 1 to be a holiday since there are normally two days to celebrate Hari Raya. So ISKL decided not to try and have school on Monday August 29 which resulted in a long holiday. As many of my colleagues were flying off to interesting locations I accepted an invitation to join Doug and family at a lovely resort just a 35 min. drive out of KL. We are enjoying swimming, reading, catching up on blogs and time to be together.











The resort has a nice Italian restaurant where we ate. We are at the resort for three nights. -Nancy

New ISKL Librarians

One of the highlights of work at ISKL this year is having new colleagues in library land. I hosted a librarian gathering and it was fun to get better acquainted. There are now four ISKL librarian's. Picture below L to R: Jason, new Middle School Librarian, from PA, USA; me from OR, USA; Stefania, new half-time elementary librarian from Canada; Jane, new full-time elementary librarian from Auckland, New Zealand. I think we are a strong team and I'm learning lots from them.

The librarian gathering included other families and librarians who are not currently working at ISKL. We figured that between the seven of us pictured below we had over 140 years of combined experience of working in libraries. Front row L-R: Beth, new in KL, worked in Vermont, Bangladesh and Egypt; Betsy, worked in Minnesota, Egypt and Singapore; Jane worked in New Zealand, Beijing and now ISKL. Back row L-R, Jason, taught in Maryland, librarian in Doha, Qatar and now librarian at ISKL; me, librarian in OR, Nairobi, Kenya and now ISKL; Tracy, taught in Indiana, China, Amman, Jordan, now teaches at ISKL and has her Masters in Library Science (MLS); Stefania, taught in Turkey, Canada and now is elementary librarian at ISKL. We say, "Yea, for librarians!"

It is so great to be working in a school where librarians are valued. This is especially true when the Salem-Keizer School District cut all 48 middle school and elementary school library positions this year. Then they wonder why reading scores aren't higher. -Nancy

Back to KL for Nancy

It was back to work for Nancy but one of the joys of arriving back in KL on July 30th was getting to spend time with Doug, Tracy, Reeve, Gabi and Rania. We had Sunday brunch at my condo. Grandpa Ron was missed for his good pancakes. Reeve and Doug played the cow farm game that was a gift from Uncle Don and Aunt Lynn. It is one of Reeve's favorite games. He handily beat his Dad. Gabi relaxed on the couch. -Nancy

Hurricane Irene on Eccleston St.

The huge tree in Mark and Marta's front lawn surrendered a couple of its large limbs to the wind gusts of Hurricane Irene early on Sunday morning (1:38 a.m), August 28th. As you can see, the foliage at the end of those limbs was right up against the window in Daniel and Eli's room when morning light illuminated the scene. Mark heard the impact while he and the boys were sleeping in the basement, but I slept through the entire event. Fortunately, the limbs caused little damage -- a slight tear in a window screen and a badly dented gutter at the corner of the house. We all are in hopes that the county will do the clean-up since the tree belongs to them and is on the county right-of-way strip where a sidewalk would normally be. (We estimated that the storm dumped about 4" of rain right here in less than 24 hours.) - rw

Remodeling on Eccleston St.

One of the exciting things about arriving back in Silver Spring, MD this time has been the chance to see the beautiful remodel of the living room-kitchen-sunroom that opens up the main part of the house from front-to-back. (The view above looks from the living room toward the back yard; below is the view toward the street. [Notice the attractive hanging lights over the divider between kitchen & living room.]) Since kitchen cabinets were removed to accommodate the wider opening, new cabinets were built on the east wall of the kitchen, including a broom closet (right) and a soon-to-be-installed butcher block desk in the opening to the left of the window. The picture below shows the divider between the living room and kitchen. Several odds-and-ends still need to be completed, including a final walk-through once the desk is in place. - rw

Once again to the ballpark ...

On Wednesday evening, August 24th, I took Daniel, Eli and Micah on the Metro down to the Nationals' ballpark to meet Mark for a 7:05 p.m. game against the Arizona Diamondbacks (lineup below). Prior to the game the boys had a chance to have their picture taken with good-'ole Teddy Roosevelt, one of the four U.S. presidents who compete in a race at each of the home games. Unfortunately, as one can observe from the "scorecard" below, Teddy has never done well in the competition! The Nationals also came up short in a 4-2 loss even though with two outs in the bottom of the 9th, Lance Nix and Jonny Gomes both hit successive home runs -- too little, and too late. - rw L-R: Teddy, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abe Lincoln (race-leader)

Great Beach Weather at Manzanita!

It was tough to drive down to the Oregon Coast on Monday, August 15th and find sunny skies and temperatures in the 70's!

Tasha and I arrived at Sandwood at about 3:00 p.m. on Monday and had two nights and a couple of days of glorious weather. On the second night we cooked hot dogs and s'mores over an open fire on the beach and really enjoyed watching the sunset and eventually, the emergence of a few stars out of the darkening sky. Since we needed to vacate the beach place by about Noon on Wednesday to prepare for the arrival of the Rod Sandoz family, we drove straight to Mo's at Cannon Beach and had a delicious lunch prior to making the drive back to Portland. - rw (Apologies for the lack of "A+quality pictures," but since I forgot my camera we needed to rely on Tasha's cell phone!)

Backpacking Vicariously ...

A strange thing happened to me about a year-and-a-half ago when I reached the 3/4 century mark. For some strange reason, my zeal for backpacking had abated. So, when Tasha announced that she was heading out for an overnight backpack trip to the Green Lakes Area out of Bend, OR on August 13-14, I had no deep passion to go along. Very strange, huh?
Tasha's roommate from Korea joined the group (4 in all) for her very first backpacking adventure. The weather was spectacular for the trip with bright sunny skies and a full moon at night (one night after the high point of the Perseid meteor shower!). Because of the record levels of snow in the Cascades this year there was an abundance of snow on the peaks, and even on the ground at about 7000', half way through August. Because of the clear skies, no one even took a tent!Tasha's report of the climb to the top of Broken Top indicated that it was pretty much a "walk-up" from Green Lakes until you get to the place where you need to use careful handholds and footholds to scramble up the last 15-20 feet to the summit. (The pix is of trip leader Troy assisting Tasha in finding footholds for the harder part of getting down!)The picture below of Tasha and her roommate was taken not far from Green Lakes prior to the Sunday morning climb. - rw