Thursday 17 January 2008

Ok I feel that today's blog is a challenge, as in I don't really know what to say.



We have had quite an interesting week this week. Firstly on Monday Lily and I met up with five other local home educating families, in a place called Action Replay, which is a huge soft play area suitable for children of all ages, mainly birth to 12yrs. Not sure that I know many 12 yrs that frequent a big soft play area, but most 2 - 7yr that I know love these kind of places. Lily loves meeting up with her friends here and running of energy and steam and supposedly the parents can chat to each other, if they are not too busy running after their tearaway toddlers. I think we all crave for adult conversation from time to time and sometimes we can manage decent chats between bouts of running after toddlers.

Tuesday turned out to be a loooong busy day, I had an appointment for 10.30 and in order for me to attend it I needed to have Lily in Durham by 9.30, where she was going to be looked after by my ex partner, it's about a 15 - 20 min drive from where I live, then came back for my appointment which was for 50 Min's, then had to go back to Durham to pick Lily up. But while we were there we had our preview session for Lily's photograph that she had took last week, we were there for about 45 Min's and had to select our favourite picture out of 40 photos, this was not an easy task believe me ...... money allowing I would have bought several of the photos. But Lily has truely enjoyed this Christmas gift experience. I can't remember if I mentioned it last week, but the photo portrait sitting was done by Venture http://www.thisisventure.co.uk

Later that evening Lily and I met up with our friends Claire and Hermione and we went off to Durham,. We had bought tickets to see Wototo, an African Children's Gospel choir, which in it self suggests a slight religious overtone. For which I was ok about. I try not to be too judgemental, as living quite an alternative life style my self, I believe that anyone should be allowed to follow any path they choose as long as it does not harm anyone else.

The children were good the dancing and drumming were good, all very talented young children ages from 9 to 13. But in my humble opinion there was not enough singing, dancing or drumming or enough information of the plight of these youngsters, who were all orphans. All their parents died of aids or aids related illnesses, or the children had been rescued from being child soldiers. These children come from Uganda.

These children were encouraged during the performance to talk about God, Gods plan for them, his love for them, how he choose to rescue them and give them new parents and one child even said that 'If he has a problem, then all he had to do was to pick up the phone and God would answer and sort his problem out for him.' Lily later asked me if it was true, if there was a god and if he could answer the phone. During the show they repeatedly asked for money / donations to help fund their trip and the Wototo villagers, which initially was ok, but when it exceeded more than three or four times, it became rather uncomfortable for me. I did really enjoy the singing and the children and Lily really enjoyed the experience. Which is one of the good things about home education, being able to show that there are many other, views, religions and cultures out there, which are not always what we believe in, but that other people do. But does not necessarily make one right and the other wrong. It's about alternative life styles and choices and being strong enough not to judge other people for what they believe is right for them. Oh dear I think I have waffled on a bit here and not sure if I have made any sense.http://raisingthenextgeneration.blogspot.com/ May be my friends links on her site will make more sense.

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