Double digits.

Truce invited all the girls from her class to come round for high tea to celebrate her tenth birthday. 

The afternoon started with the chocolate game, the one where two dice circulate the group and whoever rolls a 6 has to put on gloves and a beanie to cut a square of chocolate.  This was the first time Truce’s classmates had seen the game.  There was laughter, there was squealing and there was chocolate... enough said.

High tea was served in the west wing (which doubles as the east wing, dinning room and office).  As parental hosts, it can be a little daunting to host a party where you can’t understand the guests but we had the help of Rosario and Indiana to explain the games.  Interestingly no tea was actually served.

Later the swarm of chicas moved out to the back patio to make paper flowers out of coloured tissue paper, courtesy of Martha Stewart.  Fold, fold, concertina, fold, flip, fold, spin instructions don't always translate well and some of the corsages required a second chance to bloom.  Luckily no two flowers in nature are the same and the girls were happy to wear them in their hair.

The quickest two hours of our life finished with cake and bilingual renditions of Happy Birthday.  

Wanted, one invigilator.

Talluah has just found out that two of her subjects require her to do a paper test at a testing centre.  Studying university by distance education has its difficulties and a quick search on the web found that the nearest testing centre is in Chile.  Which is only a five hour bus trip followed by a two hour flight.  The uni has said that she may be able to create a testing centre here in 9 de Julio if she can organise an invigilator.  We were about to start looking on ebay to see if we could pick up a cheap one but it turns out that the layman’s translation of invigilator is a person who watches exams to make sure no one cheats.  Talluah is in the process now of seeing if the school will be accepted as a testing centre.

One of my grade 6 students proudly showed me a list of swear words in English, the type of words that a sailor would have troubles saying out loud.  I asked her what they were for and she replied it was the homework.  At first I thought she was trying to ruffle my feathers so I asked if it would be OK if I showed the principal.  She said yes.  I asked if I could show her parents and again she was fine with the idea.  None of the bilingual teachers were free so I asked another teacher for help question the student’s reason for writing these words.  This teacher doesn’t speak a word of English so she needed a few minutes to translate the list of words to get their meaning.  When she came back into the room she asked the class to explain the homework that I had given.   It turns out that the student misunderstood the homework.  I had asked them to find the English meaning for four words, one of them being the word groceries – food from a supermarket.  The teacher explained to me that the word groceries sounds like Spanish word groserías, which means swear words.  The poor student had thought that I had asked them to find English curse words.  I flushed red as a beetroot and by next break the story had already spread around the staff.

Insert pole 7B into tab C10

One of the parents from school has acreage on the outskirts of town, about three kilometres from our house.  The whole school went there today to learn camping skills such as pitching a tent, shelter making and lighting a fire.

By lunchtime, the sun was filtering through camp smoke and children were wandering around with crowns made of bougainvillea eating an endless supply of hamburgers.  As it is in Australia, only males of the species were permitted to cook on the open fire. 

There were about 150 children running around the property and there wasn’t one sign of barricading or cordoning off the fire area.  However, Depp was disappointed that in the afternoon workshops the Kinder 5 class wasn’t allowed to build a fire.

It's a good day to be a mum.

Being far away from my mumma bear on Mother's Day is especially hard.  Although it is made easier with the cuddles and cards from my little cubs.  

Last night Ricky and the two little ones, who aren't so little anymore (Indy was out being social), walked into town with me, took me to my favourite wool shop and bought me dinner.  Ok, so it was a food truck but I didn't have to cook it, a win is a win.  

This morning I was awarded with beautiful heartfelt hand made cards and paintings.  I had a lovely video chat with my mumma bear and afterwards facturas - and yes, they do taste as good as they look!

Best part by far though is that the Argentine Mother's Day is on October so this year I get to have two Mother's Days.