Spring break is finally here

I am officially on Spring Break.

The stretch between breaks at school was a long one this time. I don't know why I was asleep at the switch last year when the school calendar proposal became available for voting on, but this one escaped me. I didn't see the long time between breaks. This week's vacation is a week later than usual. We usually have break from the last few days in March at the end of the first weekend in April. The February long weekend break was deleted, so even that little stress-relieving hop from January to February to the end of March was absent. Losing Feb break and the later week for Spring Break made a difference. We went from January 6 to April 6 without a break except for Martin Luther King day.

A school is a living organism. The emotions, intensity, climate all build as the year progresses, the children mature, and the curriculum gets progressively more difficult. Stress is palpable. The teachers and staff get tired but the children get tired too. In many cases, they live busier lives than some staff! Some kids arrive at school as early as 7:15 and some children whose parents work are not picked up from the After School Program until 5:00, 5:30, or even 6:00. They go to music lessons, church, ball practice, or on errands with mom or dad. It is a looong day for them. Add 12 weeks of long days and you have an environment where the week off is very needed and very welcome.


I plan to do the things I always do. Listen to the birds outside. Sit in the swing on a sunny day and read. Nap on my 110 year old four-post bed in the sun with my cats curled on my feet. Write and study. I am going to start a biography by Temple Grandin, a theological book by John MacArthur, and short stories by Herman Melville (Moby-Dick author). I put the car in the garage and do not plan on taking it out at all except Sunday and Sunday for church.

These things which I enjoy so much are absent of noise and absent of people. When my noise-overloaded brain is ready, I plan to watch some movies. Mr Pip with Hugh Laurie looks good:

As a war rages on in the province of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, a young girl becomes transfixed by the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, which is being read at school by the only white man in the village.

The Well-Digger's Daughter also looks good.

In 1930s southern France, a father is torn between his sense of honor and his deep love for his daughter when she gets in trouble with the wealthy son of a shopkeeper.

As does the television mini-series The Indian Doctor.

When a sleepy 1960s Welsh mining town's only doctor dies, the only replacement the union representative could find arrives, straight from India. To everyone's surprise, he's better educated and more cultured then anyone they know, yet friendly and eager to help. His wife however looks down on the 'peasants', compared to viceregal Delhi, and wants him to move to London.

These are films that seem culturally interesting to me, will feature great scenery, and be pretty to look at. Meanwhile, though I have been awake and up for only three hours, I am going to take my first nap.