Friday

It's been a week.
Here is Travis at co-op on Monday, during speech class. His teacher told him that he had to get his hair out of his face.

 And here is the Indian elephant Katie made as a history craft project. Anatomically I think it is a bit iffy, but it's cute, and the gold coins are lovely and shiny. (Gold Sculpey clay is a properly golden gold!)

Wednesday was Latin club, with election of officers/committee heads as the feature. The positions were announced two months ago, and Katie had her heart set on being head of the entertainment committee. She planned her strategy (demonstration of her baking skills by baking a cake) and wrote an awesome speech. Both really were very good...

but she lost anyway. Which was a total surprise because we hadn't known anyone else wanted the post. A teenage boy who wasn't at the last Latin club meeting hopped up after Katie's speech and earned lots of laughs and most of the votes with his "doctored" photos of himself at various wild parties. It was clever, and he was funny in an Animal House sort of way*, but Katie was heart broken. I was so proud of her, though, when she maintained her composure even after the victor took a big piece of her cake and pointedly dumped it in the trash in front of her. It was one of those experiences which she probably needed, much like having to deal with Mean Girls at camp this summer, but it was hard to watch.

None of the other positions even required a vote, since only the people "running" for the spots wanted them (and even they mostly didn't really care). Travis got Webmaster, even though his hair was back in his face when he gave his speech.

On a happier note, next month's meeting is planned as a costume party. Katie is planning to go as Hera. Once she got over being devastated she was back to her sweet, imperious self, and I think Hera will suit her.

And, because we like to keep the internet well supplied with cat pictures, here are some that Travis took this week. Emma has been hauling around that fish lately, along with the teddy bear.

Travis also has gotten his Minecraft server up and running properly, at last! It includes castles, Zombie City, and exploding sheep. He said I should mention this, but that I couldn't include a link because I have So many readers that there might be a mad rush to the site which would crash the server. Isn't he sweet?

Last week we read about India, and this week has been China. Neither is hugely fascinating to me, but I have enjoyed Confucius more than Buddha, and the Chinese poetry, including selections from the Dao de Jing, is lovely! And then, there is the Iliad! Have I mentioned how very much I am enjoying the Iliad this second time through? I got up the nerve to start posting questions and comments in my Harvard "The Ancient Greek Hero" online course, and the community there is wonderfully helpful. After the Iliad, the class will go on to study the Odyssey, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Plato, all of which Travis and I (with our co-op group) are reading for school this year, so it is a perfect fit!

*I had Katie approve the section on the Latin club election before I posted the story, now that she's gone, I want to add that the boy who beat her is really just a cheerful, goofy teenager. Not a demon. Even the business of dumping the cake in the garbage was almost certainly just thoughtless. He won because he was funny, which, in an ideal world, isn't why a person would get voted into a position, but people often do win elections for reasons that seem irrelevant. I pointed this Life Lesson out to Katie, but she found it unhelpful.