Alex has been going to the Yamaha music school for almost two months now. He has a one hour class every Monday and he has to practice a couple of time through the week. Enough to get the basics. Here is a part of Alex’ first performance, together with his best friend Dario.
I was very happy with my running result. After month without running at all I was a bit worries about running 10K, but in the end it went very well, and I finished under the hour. My time was 54 minutes and 30 seconds. Not bad at all considering that it was raining during the first part of the race.
Tonight it is my turn again. A night run of 10 kilometers in the dark through Las Palmas.
Today we have another run especially for kids. We hope Alex will enjoy himself and get a nice shiny medal, but this time there is also a good cause. We are running for a medal and for little kids with cancer. A double win.
English is without a doubt a very important language. Still, in the education we are giving Alex and Alan it is a little less important. For our sons Dutch is much more important. I want them to have at least a basic knowledge of Dutch so that they can manage themselves once in Holland. At school English is also a little less important. Alex’ school focuses more on German, with German classes every day, and English only twice a week.
We still feel that a little English at school, and all the English we can get on the TV should be enough to get a basic understanding. At least, as long as he is not taught incorrectly. At his school Alex got a drawing with the English title “What’s doing the dog?”, the words are in an incorrect order, which make it quite wrong. It should have been: “What’s the dog doing?”. Such a mistake in just once sentence is sure making us a bit worried.
Things are going very well with our kids. They support eachother very well, even though sometimes little Alan treats Alex to a bite.
On this picture we are visiting Jardin Canario, the local botanical garden. We went to see if there were any pitangas, but we found none. Still it was not all for nothing, we got to see a lot of Canarian lizards.
Some time ago we found a treasure on the beach. An old earring, which looked to be made of gold. Ana told me to throw away the worthless piece of plastic, but I had my doubts and took it home with me.
Because I was curious I took the cleaned up earring to a shop where they buy gold. I thought that they would for sure be able to tell me if it was really gold. The first test was with a magnet. The gold didn’t stick, so this was a good sign. The second test was with a filing stone and some liquid. This test also passed. Then the guy took the weight. 1.1 Grams. His offer for this was 20 euros. When I asked about the stone in the earring he laughed and told me that was for the trash.
I could have accepted the 20 euros but something didn’t feel right. Why would someone make a gold piece of jewellery and use a fake, worthless stone. What was even stranger, why would the guy measure the weight of the gold, including the worthless stone and offer a gold price based on the entire weight. This would mean he is paying a gold price for a worthless stone. I have to look a bit further. To be continued…
Alex has a hard time enjoying extra activities outside of his school hours. He did not like kung fu, and swimming was also a no go. Now we finally found something he likes. The Yamaha music school. Making music on a keyboard.
Alex already followed two classes, and he enjoyed them. He now knows Do, Re and Mi! We got a keyboard at home, so he can practice all he wants. The neighbors are not (yet) complaining, so Alex must be doing a good job.
Alan already had a well trained neck, but he keeps progressing and is getting stronger all the time. His diet is still limited to only milk, but he is starting to complain, so we let him lick some fruit. He already sucked on a piece of apple, an orange and a pear, and he loved the new flavors.
Alan is growing very very fast. Like they say in Dutch he’s growing like a cabbage. He is getting bigger by the day and he is getting stronger. We train him sometimes to support his neck and as you can see in the image he is doing nicely.
Alan also spoke his first word. Not the cliche like every other baby, no, Alan didn’t settle for ‘mommy’ but choose his first word very carefully and made his first alliance at the same time. His first word was ‘Alex’.