Xavier's Cello Recital

First Cello Recital from C Schuelke on Vimeo.

You're a Mean One. . .

Mr. Grinch!

I sent Cole to the website, Art for Kids, at artforkidshub.com
and told him to see if he could follow the instructions for drawing The Grinch.  The above is his first drawing, but his second coloring.  I think he was pleased with how it turned out and he commented that he really liked the way the information was presented at the Art for Kids website.

Mello Cello

For those of you who don't already know. . . .
Xavier is taking Cello lessons with Miss Emmie.

Taste of India

Mom's plate.

After the event we took this
picture next to a wooden
peacock. The peacock is the
national bird of India.

On the Saturday night of 11-2-13 the Schuelke family or, at least most of them (Evan was sick) went to an event called Taste of India to eat some Indian food, see some Indian dancing, and as it turned out do some Indian dancing.  This event was held by the ICA (India Catholic Association) to raise money to build a school in India.
We sat down (at Table 18 to be exact) to wait for Dad and read through the programs. Seconds after Dad walked, in we sang the National Anthems of the U.S. and India. Soon after, the dancing began. First was the Invocation Dance. Next they showed us a short video about the school. After the video was over, we ate. I, personally, tried everything on the buffet which included naan (non) the equivalent of bread, tikka masala, (tee-ka   mu-sal-u), palak paneer (pu-lak  pu-neer), somosa (su-mo-su) yogurt dip and more. For desert there was chocolate cake and mango custard. During the eating the Peacok, Bollywood Kidz, Kavadi Chindu, and Dola Re dances took place. After that they drew winners for the raffle.They did the Lights of Love dance and then we took a mini lesson on Indian dancing. That pretty much ended it. They said thank you and got us out of there so they could clean up.

This dancer was the most skilled
in traditional Indian dancing.

You can see some dancers waiting for their turn behind us.

 These dancers had real peacock feathers for part of their costume.

From Hamsa to Henna

One of our art projects for our India unit was making "henna hands".   There was an artist offering henna (or mendhi) at the Taste of India fundraiser, and I think it is beautiful, but I don't think it is quite appropriate for my lifestyle.  If I knew I could remove it when I was ready to, I might spring for it.  So instead of getting real henna, I had the boys trace their hands again and then draw henna designs on their paper hands. 

Evan's Henna Hand

Xavier's First Attempt at a  Henna Hand

Cole's Henna Hand

Xavier wanted to do a second hand.  He says he really liked doing them.  It was late in the day and he must have said that he wanted to do another one, but he didn't know what to do.  So I had him watch me sketch out a pattern, starting in the center and just moving out, add the same things around the circle.  I encouraged him to make it squiggly.  Then I turned him loose while I worked on supper.

Mom's demonstration for Xavier

 

 

Xavier's practice on scratch paper

I think his second hand turned out magnificent!

Xavier's Second Henna Hand

Henna is usually black when first applied, then becomes a burnt orange color.  I looked briefly for a picture of the henna design that won a UT photo contest.  It was pictured in the Alcalde, but unfortunately, I didn't find it.

Evanessence

 Here is an acrostic poem of my name

                                         Extreme
                            Very
                            Awesome
                            NOT OLD ENOUGH

All Saints Day 2013

Our parish hosted an All Saints Day Festival on October 30th and dressing up as saints was a major component.  This pretty well doubled the costume-making efforts for the year. 

St. Michael the Archangel

  

My name means "Who Is Like God".  I am the patron of police, paratroopers, mariners, and grocers.  (Yes, grocers.  I haven't figured that out yet.)  My feast day is Sept. 29.

Blessed John Paul II

I was born in Poland in 1920. My family called me Lolek, but by the time I entered the seminary my parents and my brother were no longer living. I attended seminary in secret while living at the residence of the Bishop of Krakow. I very much enjoyed the outdoors.  I was called to Krakow for a meeting when I  already had a kayak trip planned with friends. They called me Voo-Yek, which means Uncle in Polish.  At this meeting I was ordained Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow.  I begged permission to skip the reception and returned to my friends where I celebrated Sunday Mass with them using an overturned kayak for an altar.

I was elected Pope in 1978 and served for 26 years, making my pontificate the 3^rd longest.

I will be canonized on April 27, 2014.

St. Maximillan Kolbe

I was born in Poland in 1894. I became a Franciscan. I had a newspaper called "Knight of the Immaculate". I went to Japan and India.  I returned to Poland. Later I was arrested by the Nazis and brought to Auschwitz. When the Nazis were choosing ten men to go to the starvation chamber, I offered to go in place of a man with a wife and children. I led the people in the starvation chamber in prayer and song. I was the last to die. I was canonized in 1982.

 

St. Catherine of Siena and St. Martin of Tours also made an appearance!

APB on GI Joe

BOLO (Be on the Look Out) seems to have replaced All Points Bulletins, but here is the important part:

Xavier would really like to have a 12-inch Police and K-9 unit GI Joe.   Most likely finds will be on ebay and garage sales.  I would request that anyone who finds any 12-inch GI Joe or accessories in a garage sale or the bottom of someone's toy chest send them our way please.

Also, FYI, they do not want the GI Ninja cobra whatevers that ARE in the stores.  They want old, classic GI Joe.  If anyone sees the collectible Teddy Roosevelt Joe at a decent price, that would be really fun.

Morocco

Xavier's favorite part:  Building a casbah with "cannons pointing towards the ocean". The big green duplo blocks sticking out at the top are the cannons.

Cole's favorite part:  The reading, such as

The Traveling Man: The Journey of Ibn Battuta, 1325-1354 by James Rumford.  Ibn Battuta was a kind of Moroccan Marco Polo.  I especially liked the author's talent in crafting such phrases such as "Traveling: first it leaves you speechless, then it makes you a storyteller,"  and "Traveling:  first it makes you a stranger, then it brings you new friends."  Those may not be the exact quotes as we returned the library books before I finished this post. :-)

and

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust by Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland DeSaix.  We learned from this book that the rector of the Parisian Mosque at this time was Si Kaddour Benghabrit, an Algerian, who had also been a high ranking diplomat in Morocco.  The mosque was built in 1926 when Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia were under French rule.



Evan's favorite part: creating hamsa. Hamsa is the Arabic word for five, and also for these "good luck charms" popular in Morocco (and elsewhere.) 

Cole's hamsa from a piece of Altair Design paper

Xavier's hamsa

Evan's brightly colored hamsa

It was also a treat to look at the online photo album of a middle school friend of mine who has done a lot of traveling, including Morocco.  I love Google image search, but there is something nice about knowing from where the photos came.  Though it wasn't in her Morocco album, one of the first pictures we stumbled on was a photo of a hamsa that she had sent as a gift to someone else.  Fun!

The Big Green Statue, a post about the trip to New York we went on in July.

I am a little lat getting it up.
 In New York we went to see the Statue of Liberty.

This is a paper model I made (with a pattern)
before we left.

After we arrived on Liberty Island, we walked around for a little while and then went through security to go to the crown. After security, we climbed the stairs in the pedestal to get to the statue. When we got to the top of the pedestal we went to take a look from the observation deck, then started up the statue to the crown.

This is in the crown (tight quarters).

In the picture from the crown (below) you can see the new World Trade Center to the far left, and a spike of her crown to the top left (its pretty cool to know that you just saw the actual metal Bartholdi touched).

 You can see the New World Trade Center
to the far left.  

A good thing about taking the stairs instead of the elevator is we got to see the huge bolts pictured below. We are not sure if they actually hold the statue but they are definitely not decoration.

It must have taken a big wrench to tighten
that bolt.

Gauchos

Gauchos
Are: Argentinian cowboys

Have: Capybara saddles

Can: Ride with no boots

These two pictures are from
Sticker dolly dressing around
the world.  The book has festivals
 from around the world.

Including festivals from the Gaucho
Festival in Argentina (above) to the
Rio Carnival in Brazil 

We watched a film called Ride Around the World about cowboys around the world. That is where I learned that Gauchos have capybara saddles and they ride with no boots.

Inuksuk

Evan's Inuksuk

On our first day of studying Canada, we covered the First Nations and the animals of Canada.  (The French and the English arrive later.)  Eskimo is an Algonquin word meaning "eaters of raw meat."  The 'eskimo' call themselves Inuit- "people".

Our hands-on project for the day was experimenting and building Inuksuk. 

Inuk means 'person' in the Inut language, suk means 'substitute'.

The inuksuk was used by the Inuit in Canada to show people the way.

Did you know Canada changed her map in 1995 to recognize the Nunavet Territory in Northeast Canada in 1995?  The Nunavut flag prominently features an Inuksuk and the North Star.

Xavier's first Inuksuk

The book we read to guide our project explained that the Inuksuk acted as Arctic messengers of stone.  It contained comments from several Inuit who were born in the 1915-1930s.  It seems that though Inuksuit are "people substitues", they are really not intended to look like people;  at least that is not the goal.  I saw many inuksuk trinkets in a Canadian souvenir shop this summer and I think that as their popularity spreads they will be increasingly equated with having a human like form.

A "hole" in an inuksuk communicates that direction that should be taken.

They can also have a more cairn like shape or arrow like features for pointing the way.

A larger inuksuk