Sköldpaddan och jordgubben

Glad Valborg- Good Walpurgis to you! April 30th. One of Sweden's more major holidays. The start of a long weekend-- tomorrow is May Day. There is normal and then there is this year. Most years, people gather their picnics and stuff to burn, throw the wood or whatever on a big bonfire and stand around in large groups to sing songs about spring coming along. And yes, apparently hedge hogs come out around now too . Large, large crowds seem to be a common theme.  This celebration dates to the middle ages; I'm borrowing a description from elsewhere: In the Middle Ages, the administrative year ended on 30 April. Accordingly, this was a day of festivity among the merchants and craftsmen of the town, with trick or treat, dancing and singing in preparation for the forthcoming celebration of spring. Among farmers and peasants, it was an important day in the calendar as the annual village meeting was held, with e ggs and schnapps as refreshments. The meeting also chos...

I dis-enrolled the kids from Futuraskolan International School this week. Yesterday, I returned their  school iPads, math books and library books and picking up their official "leaving papers" from the school. Walked through the school gate, into the door, put hand sanitizer on, and walked in. Kids running everywhere, no obvious protection other than the hand sanitizer. In between everything, we've been downloading grade reports, files, etc. It's been interesting to look at the correspondence from the school and how it's changed over time- I've posted a some of the correspondence from more recent times below (it gets a bit long but might be of interest). On our end, we pulled our kids from in person school on 15 March and they've been working from home ever since. As noted before, one of the reasons for leaving Sweden is our concern about putting our kids back into a school with too many kids and packed hallways- especially when we feared that our k...