We’ve been in Greece for just over 6 months now, and we’ve
developed a routine. Unfortunately, as I realized yesterday, our current
routine does not include time for me to write and post on this blog—which would
be why I haven’t blogged for half the time we’ve been here! It’s time for a
change in that part of the routine, at least.
Here is how our days typically go: Jeff gets up and starts
getting ready. Once he’s at a certain point in his routine, he wakes me up and
I start getting ready too. Then Alexa wakes up. Jeff and Alexa share a little
time most mornings, getting Alexa started on her morning chores. By the time I’m
out of the bathroom and headed downstairs, Jeff has left for work and Alexa is
playing. She continues to play while I empty the dishwasher, start the laundry, and get breakfast
for both of us.
After breakfast, it’s time for school. We do 2 pages of math,
then a lesson from Logic of English. I read aloud a Bible story, a page or two
from a poetry book, our history reading, and a literature selection. Sometimes
I also read a math story, a science book, or a health book. Sometimes Alexa
reads to me from her reader. Sometimes school is done at that point. Sometimes
we do another lesson in one or more of our weekly (or less-than-weekly, as the
case may be) subjects: art, music, science, geography, and health. We try to go
for a walk after school most days, though we’ll frequently do it in between
subjects instead of after.
After school—or sometimes, after I read but before our
less-than-daily lesson—it’s lunchtime. After lunch, Alexa goes to her room to “rest”
(in reality, play) for two hours. I can’t compromise on that time; I need it
too much for my own sanity. We call it Alexa’s rest time, but it’s really Mama’s
quiet time. I use that time to read my Bible, do housework, get dinner started …
whatever I need to get done that I have not yet gotten done that day. I’m
hoping to start using some of that time to blog again. When Lexa comes back out
of her room, usually between 3 and 4pm, we finish any remaining school subjects—today
she’s been begging for an art lesson, so we’ll do that—and then she plays, on
her own if I still have my own work to do, or with me if I don’t have something
else I need to do.
This play time continues until Jeff gets home from work.
Dinner usually is ready when he gets home, so we eat, then he gets Lexa ready
for bed while I clean up the kitchen. Usually she’s in bed sometime between 8
and 9pm. Depending on what time it is, Jeff and I may have an hour or so
together before I need to start getting ready for bed myself.
There are some variations to the routine. Sometimes Alexa
plays with one of the neighbor kids instead of me in the evening, or we walk to
a neighborhood park where she can play with other kids. Every two weeks, Alexa
and I meet up with some other ladies and their kids for a field trip to a
museum or archaeological site. Once a week, we leave home right after we finish
English so we can walk to our local laiki (farmers market) to buy fresh
vegetables and fruit. We often walk down to the kiosk near our house to buy milk
and yogurt. We occasionally walk all the way to the supermarket for more
substantial groceries, but more often either Jeff or I will go on the weekends,
because it’s an uphill walk home from the supermarket and there’s no parking to
speak of there. If there’s not much to buy, Jeff often volunteers to walk
there; if there’s a bit more, he’ll drive me there and then drive around the
block while I shop. Every month or so, we drive to the butcher and stock our freezer
full of meat so we don’t have to go every week.
Our lives have settled into a predictable routine. We live
in Greece, but our lives aren’t so very different from what they would be in
the United States. There are more places for good field trips here, but there’s
no homeschool co-op. We most likely wouldn’t have a farmers market within
walking distance in the U.S., but we could drive to one, or buy produce in the
supermarket that would be comparable to what we can get at the laiki here. The
supermarket where we’d buy our groceries in America would have a parking lot,
so I’d drive there during the week rather than having Jeff drive me or go
without me. But for the most part, our lives here are very similar to what our
lives would be in America.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t felt as inspired to blog lately—usually
I blog about the things that are different, the things I need to process or
figure out, the things I think people in the United States would find
interesting. I’m not quite sure how to blog about regular life, when that
regular life doesn’t feel as exotic to me as it did back when we lived in Egypt
or Cambodia. But I do need to write, for my own sanity, for my own memory, for
my own outlet.
So that’s my goal now—to write more often. How often will
that be? I’m not sure. Once a week? Once every two weeks? Once a month?
Whatever it is, I’m going to try at a bare minimum to make it more often than I’ve
been doing … so maybe I’ll see you in two and a half months!
