I can tell I'm boring everyone because I get fewer and fewer comments, but oh well. This is sort of my own record I guess.

so this was a busy week of entering into South America for our school work. Also as some notes of what's been happening in our family, Damian has suffered for a month with "walking pneumonia". We took him to the emergency room one night because of a bad reaction to a prescription he was given. He's doing better now, though not well. He's had a cough that has lingered. Marisa, at the beginning of the month had it too and missed a week of school! She's bounced back though.

We still have Bob, the tarantula--much to Damian's dismay.

Here's what our synopsis of the week looks like:

Northern South America
The countries of Northern South America are Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. These countries were originally inhabited by Indian tribes, and were conquered by the Spanish.
The Incas were an Indian tribe in the Andes mountains. They worshipped the sun and thought they had to keep it alive with human blood. Thus human sacrifice was common. They mummified their rulers and kept them in the temples to ask questions. They built beautiful and mysterious cities, such as Machu Pichu in the mountains of Peru. It was so high up in the mountains that it lay hidden for hundreds of years. The architecture is wondrous because they built using enormous stones that were carved to fit each other so tightly that no mortar was needed. They made the Nazca lines in the dessert of Peru. These are enormous pictures that can only be seen from high above. Earthquakes and storms don’t erase them.
The land of northern South America ranges from dessert in Peru, to mountains, to rainforests. We visited the zoo and saw many of the animals that are found in South America. Llamas have been used for centuries for their wool and as pack animals in the mountains. Angel Falls is the highest waterfall in the world and it is located in Venezuela. We visited a woman, Corrola, who is from Venezuela. She taught us to make arepas (fried “bread” that can be stuffed with other ingredients), and spoke of her country. Raton Perez comes to take children’s lost teeth away (not a tooth fairy).
The women of Peru and Ecuador always carry around a shawl that is used for carrying things. They carry their babies in them and bundles of things to sell in the markets.

At the zoo--so appropriate.

An OLMEC head! Cool! And Jared had to put his hand up its nose.

They even had Aztec-ish paintings. Wow.

The kids are in a homeschool PE class that they love. Faith loves the leader and is his shadow during class time. (but not in this picture)

These are our Nazca line drawings. We used chalk on sandpaper--it was kind of a neat medium. You just had to not scrape your hand too much along the sandpaper. Ouch!

I'm personally fascinated with the Nazca Lines. There are all kinds of theories surrounding them. One is that they are landing runways for aliens.

Here are a couple of actual pictures of them.