the domestic zoo

Hannah’s been using Singapore’s "Interactive Science for Inquiring Minds" (yes, that Singapore). The textbook is okay, but I don’t always like the way it orders the material. For instance, we’ll move through a Biology unit really quickly – taxonomy, classification, the study of cells, no problem. And then in the next unit they’re asking her to fill in the blanks in the equation for a  chemical reaction without even explaining the basic principles behind it. I’m just not ready to crush her scientific inquiry so early into the game, and we’ve ended up skipping good chunks of it to come back to in a later unit. Am I wrong? Some of these equations I wouldn’t have seen until I was in college.

Anyway, she’ll be done with the book in another week, and we’re trying to decide where to go next. Biology? An obvious strong point. Or Astronomy, which she has also expressed an interest in? I’m personally leaning toward Astronomy, if only because we get to make models of the planets…’cause I never really grew out of arts and crafts.

Hannah’s learning about Mesopotamia in History right now. The Fertile Crescent, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Medes and the Persians, and Ur of the Chaldees. Everytime I think of Ur I think of the joke that Dad used to tell during his sermons about Abraham, who was called from Ur without a clear sense of where he’d end up.

So Abraham would meet someone on the road, and they’d ask him, “Where are you from?”

“Ur…”

So they’d say, “Well, where are you going?”

“… I dunno.”

Things I learned this week: how to say "I’d like a cold beer" in Swahili.

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If you do a Google search for Expedia and "cancelled tickets", you’re going to find a lot of angry people who feel that Expedia ripped them off. But I have to say, I have absolutely no complaints about Expedia. They cancelled the tickets without issue, refunded the booking fee and cleared the charges. I had all of my money back in a little over two days.

After much shopping around and even more frustration (Orbitz kept ‘updating’ the fares whenever I’d select a flight; Ethiopian Airlines only takes credit or cash, not debit), I finally stuck with Kenya Airways. On the plus side, we’re sticking with one airline, which means less stress over connections and delayed flights. On the downside…we’ll be spending the night in an airport in Nairobi.

Not that I’m complaining. Where it would have cost us $5,600 without the trip to London, now it’s costing us just $4,200 with the trip to London. So when it’s all said and done, we have our tickets, and that’s one less thing I have to worry about.
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