Sweden

Maddie will be doing research on a Scandinavian country this year in geography.  It seems random, but each student is assigned a different country like Grenada or Sierra Leone.  Some get countries like Germany, and Maddie has a country that's somewhere in the middle, the nation of Sweden.  It could be something like Tonga, so there's that.  And besides, Sweden has a lot of great things to do research on.

Like this guy!  The Swedish Chef!  Maddie could do some research on cooking, and maybe even show a clip or two of this classically trained chef, and perhaps even serve up some Swedish meatballs and Swedish fish.  

Sweden has a great girls soccer team that absolutely destroyed the US Soccer team at the Olympics, and it's always fun to talk about Vikings, although one thinks about Norway and Vikings than Sweden.  One thing that always look to in December is the Gävle Goat, of course.  We'll have to focus on that one this year - hopefully it will survive once more.  The last few years, it's survived getting burned down, and seems as if that trend will last.  We have our small Gävle Goat that we bring out every year, but we don't burn it down.

Oh, and there's IKEA stuff from Sweden.  We don't have any IKEA stuff at the house, but our office has plenty of that famous do-it-yourself furniture.  Also from Sweden:  Minecraft.    Yeah, that's actually a pretty big contribution to society.

Anyway, school seems to be going well.  She's already doing her research, and will be doing that for the year.  Life is good.  

Tonight Maddie had her first piano class of the season, and she was pretty rusty.  But it's good to get started again, practicing again and loosening up those fingers.  It's now time - already - to think of a recital piece to play, and on the way home she decided that it would be good to do "Once Upon a December" from the movie "Anastasia."  She's always liked that song, and it's been a while since we've watched that movie, so we might do that again.  But it could be December when we have the recital, and that would be a fun song to play.  We'll be looking for the sheet music soon enough.

We read tonight, and we prayed.  Mom and I are starting to come out of this illness.  The symptoms are clearing somewhat, although Mom can't taste anything.  But it's been nearly two weeks and that's about the course this runs in most folks.  So we should be back to starting again and feeling human again soon enough.  Again, thankfully Maddie never had any symptoms.  She's been good, and that's something to be grateful for.