paint and awards

Hi Y'all (southern..)

I've painted the walls of the other side of the house yesterday. It was so hot on the porch, but I survived and finished the job. Everyone knows that 1,2 and 3 pm is the hottest time of the day.. and so do I.. but didn't think about it, and started painting around 1 o'clock. Fortunately I had a hat and I lots of iced tea.

That's by the way a thing they drink litres of, Iced sweet or unsweet tea, with ice in it and a slice of citron. Very fresh, although it seems like some restaurants make the sweet tea out of pure sugar.

This morning we went to Pine Grove Elementary School. Marcus and Carlos take the bus down here every morning at 7 o'clock which will take 'm to school. I'll wake up by the frontdoor or the other door-bell and hear Birdie walking to the door a few seconds later. I'll hear them stumbling in, and then Carlos's voice: ''Is merel up yet?'' They have three more days left in school before the holidays start. And their school had an award ceremony. Awards for straight A's all year, awards for perfect attendance, awards for reading and so on. They started off with the school choir who sang a song called "education rocks''. Lots of students got awards and emmy and oscar like things. Carlos got an award for perfect attendance, he hadn't missed a single class this year. And Marcus got an award for perfect reading. There were four students who received that award, and he had the most points of them all. Their mother couldn't be there, so they were really excited for us to be there.

My aunt and uncle got me this book, written by a dutch newsreporter who used to live and work in Washington. He said, among other things, that the American schoolsystem is really pushing children to work as hard as they can. Sometimes so hard that they haven't got the time to be a child. I sensed that spirit for a bit during the ceremony. And also the 'we-america'-thought was definately present. It's a good things in a way, but I can imagine it can can drive parents and even teachers to push the children to work harder and harder.

Actually we would go to gulf shores tomorrow, but Tonight at our bookstudy 'vince/vinny/vincent/samantha's husband' (so many names they call him:P) told me she wasn't feeling well and Santrail had some things that came up she really had to do tormorrow. So we'll probably go to Dauphin's island tomorrow. I'll call Megan in a second if she'd like to go, and otherwise we'll go with Jasmin, Birdie and me.

We even got a manicure today, which I had never done before..it was really funny, but I don't know whether I'll do again or not:P I don't really like to pay for something I manage to mess up in one day:P
I hope megan can come, that'd be fun. I'll write tina an email and then get ready for bed. It's so weird that y'all (southern;)) are seven hours ahead of us. That makes you even 7 hours older:-P!

night night, merel