Beginnings

It's a lovely morning here in downtown Vancouver... the sky is almost clear and the sun is shining. The buildings and sidewalks are starting to dry off after the intermittent rain that we've had since we first got here.

Yesterday was pretty good. We bummed around in the hotel room until around ten then picked up a few groceries and drove up to North Vancouver to visit the school we are thinking of sending Megan to. It was really a neat place and she seemed to feel happy there. We had a half hour tour then ended up staying to visit for three hours until I finally dragged the kids out of there. Calum was very upset to leave and I sense that if we enroll Megan it will be a daily struggle when we drop Megan off. I think Megan probably will enroll -- they were even open to us registering her this week so she can finish out the school year there. The school is democratically run and the kids are self-directed but the similarity to the school Megan attended in Burlington ends there. They are publically funded and have a large school building all to themselves. There are several paid staff members who are actively teaching and otherwise interacting with the kids at all times of day. There's a huge bulletin board just inside the school entrance with the timetable of available classes - everything from math to piano to beginners' Japanese. Kids of any age are free to attend the classes that suit them. Parents are required to spend at least 10 hrs/month working for the school and many of them choose to spend their time at the school, just hanging out with and supervising the kids. They have so much stuff to do there - there's a large art room, a gym with a stage, a well-stocked library, a science room, etc etc.

Anyway, Megan has said she wants to spend a couple more days visiting there before she makes up her mind if she wants to enroll, so I expect we'll be doing that this week and possibly next week.

One thing that was neat was that the parents are so involved in every aspect of running the place. They've managed to maintain the spirit of a democratic school in spite of all these adults around. I was asked to sit in on a school council meeting yesterday (they want all families to do this before enrolling) and the topic of the day was whether the school dress code should be changed. A tall teenage girl came in wearing a very short miniskirt and had apparently put this item on the agenda. A couple of dozen students came in for this part of the meeting and the discussion went on for more than half an hour. These kids were so involved and articulate as they talked about the pros and cons of letting people wear revealing clothes at school. I didn't stay to the end so I don't know what happened but the school puts out a regular newsletter every week and I expect that the results will be published there.

In the evening we had our interview at the housing co-op near Jeff's work. I felt a lot better about the location this time - we had a good look around and noticed that the plaza across the street is very clean and well maintained and the co-op itself is also well cared for. During the interview they gave us a tour of the place. The apartment we are interviewing for is a 3 bedroom that is adequately roomy and has sliding doors that lead out to a patio and yard. There is a common area that runs along the side of the apartment and so the kids would have plenty of room to play out there. There's also lots of scope for gardening - the person who lives there now has obviously never been a gardener and the common area has only got a bunch of bushes planted along the fences and the side of the building. Lots of room for perennials!

We'll find out in a day or two if we have been selected for the co-op. I really hope it works out because the location so close to Jeff's office would be terrific. I dislike house hunting. The rental places that sound nice are either out of our price range or already rented when I call the number in the newspaper ad. The ones that sound just OK are usually an upper floor apartment - so usually that means no yard and the potential of having very unhappy downstairs neighbours who would not be thrilled to have Calum running around above them.

I think it's time for me to have breakfast now and talk a bit with Jeff before he leaves. It's rather nice to have him around in the mornings -- even though we are downtown his commute on the skytrain is very short and he doesn't have to leave at an unholy hour like he did in Mississauga. He left here at 8 am yesterday and got to work at 8:20. I think we could definitely get to like this schedule!