The Waaaaaiting....

 Is the haaardest part. Jejeje...

But seriously. I have been so stressed out. While we wait, I have tried to give us excuses to relax and think of other things -though the phone check every 5 min has absolutely been happening- and I have also tried to just give in to the stress and sit by the TV watching the news. I stayed up the first night -all night!- because although I had been told we wouldn't get news that night, I just could not sleep. Even if I didn't get to hear the victor's name, I might still get an idea of whether it was going somewhere or not! Then last night I was so exhausted that I actually fell asleep much earlier than usual. Yesterday, school was cancelled here at home because I was so on edge and I knew it would be a bad idea. Today we tried doing school- and I've decided there's a lot of unconscious projection going on here. I mean, eventually, the irony that I tried to get us to forget about the wait by making a clock became apparent to me. Jaja. And obviously I had red and blue in mind...

 Yup. Red, blue, white.. a little gold here and there...

 ...It all brings back memories of the first election in which this man was involved. I slept like a baby back then. I just thought there was no way someone like this could possibly be taken seriously by anyone. Like when an actor, and not a very good one, runs for office. I had no worries at all back then. But this year of course I knew very very differently.

 It looks like there is hope for change, though. I'm very grateful for that.

And we did manage to get a lot done today somehow. Miss E started working on the clock way back when, but this is all very new to Mr E, so we went through everything. And of course, before we even completed our analog clock, we went outside with a compass to use the printout as a sun dial- in proper Aztec style. We've been talking about prominent cultures of the American continent and of course the Aztecs would be one of them. We've also covered the Anasazi/Puebloans and that was also tons of fun. We've been going through all the continents, one by one, and so far we only have Europe and Antarctica left. Well, we really have tried to study our Native American history as respectfully and honestly as possible. Miss E is particularly excited to have Native American blood running through her veins, so we talked about the different theories on blood percentages, belonging, and cultural relativism and cultural appropriation. And we have been to the Chaco Pueblo and museum before, so it was very cool to get to understand this amazing culture a little better. We studied their architecture and their art, their mythology, and their stories- we not only read about them, but listened to some of the contemporary Pueblo voices that are recorded out there, telling their own story for the world to listen to and learn directly from them.  

While making this model, we learned about Puebloan cultural development, and how kivas reflect that. They learned and practiced sketching traditional Pueblo patterns as seen in textiles and pottery (and talked about famous contemporary artists). We learned about differences in architecture among ancient civilizations (comparing these structures to the West African mud circle hut, Egyptian shelters and larger constructions, and central Mexico's city-states or altepetl). Will be fun to compare them to medieval huts and castles, as well as the archaic structures of Europe -maybe the Irish stone circles? I know these all span a number of centuries and for some of them even millenia, but they seem to me to be the beginnings of culture and civilization all around the world, so it's where I decided to start.

Mr E made this kiva and also worked really hard on his patterns. Maybe a little too hard. 

 

This wall is a replica of a room at the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, which we did a virtual tour of. The other side of the first level was appropriately filled with storage containers, and we also drew an underground kiva, which I failed to take a picture of.

I had also been thinking of adding a new language to our repertoire, so we have started to learn Nahuatl, the ancient language of the Mexica people. We are learning from a Mexican-American trilingual teacher who himself was taught by native speakers while living in the Huasteca Maya (central México). Nahuatl has been quite the challenge, as it is an agglomerating language (as is German, another language the kids have in their ancestry, Quijote tells me) and it feels completely different from what we have been studying before when learning Spanish or English. But we are nevertheless learning Spanish and Nahuatl together now. We are definitely beginners, barely learning how to put sentences together, but I am very excited about it.

Well, I pray this is a year of change. And as for our home, I hope this is all a good start to our November, a good stable root system as we transition into European culture. I do want to do an overview of their ancient culture and lore first, before entering into the history of colonial encounters. It will be good for them to learn all the wonderful things there are to be learned about Europe before we go into the painful stuff near the end of the month. Which is very much what I have done with cultures that feel nearer to me personally, and because I know that if maybe not now as much, eventually they will feel how near to them European culture also is to them. They are in a difficult position -they embody that difficult position- during a very difficult time in history.

Speaking of pain and suffering. Winter is coming! We have had our first snow, which admittedly, the kids really did love. I've already posted pictures on FB but here they are anyway. For posterity.

And now, back to waiting and praying, and pointlessly trying not to stress.