Thursday, March 24, 2011

Trip to school

Many people have asked the girls about school here. Now that they are well integrated into their classrooms, I'll try to get them to sit for another interview. Meanwhile I thought it would be of interest to share how we get there. In Madison we live about a 5 minute walk as the school is at the bottom of our street. Here it is a 20 minute walk, but not quite as typical as a walk through Madison. Here is our journey in pictures.


On the left is the street our flat is on. We walk up the hill and through a short pedestrian walk (on the right). From there we cross a crazy roundabout intersection and head downhill.


The blue building in the picture to the right is the library and cultural information center. The library is quite small but functional. It is not as integrated as the Madison system with all the other libraries in the area.






From there we follow a rather long street until it ends in what is left of countryside in Algorta.

We see lots of wildlife along the way. There are goats, occasionally roosters, cats, lizards and ducks. The goats and roosters are typically hanging out in the same field. As we continue our walk down the road we see our first set of cats. A couple of them come running to be greeted by the girls both in the morning and on our way home. We need to add a few extra minutes to our journey so the girls can get their kitty fix.


As we continue our journey we reach the end of this quiet road and are greeted by a rather busy roundabout intersection. Crossing there we pass under a highway and cross the street. This area is a very quiet neighborhood with mostly flats and a few stores but not nearly as active as the area in which we are living. There is a metro stop here so on really rainy days, the girls prefer the metro over the exercise. Ok, actually, everyday they would prefer the metro over the exercise, they just don't get that option ;-).
 
Our journey ends as we hit the little river and cross the bridge to their school. We typically see a couple more cats who are very skittish and several ducks.




On the left is the back of the school and the playground area for the elementary school kids. The picture on the right is the front of the school which has a couple of playsets for the younger kids. The school day begins and ends in this part of the school yard. Just as with Thoreau School in Madison, the kids line up by class to enter the building.
I hope you have enjoyed the picturesque journey between the mountains that we take daily to get to and from school. It's amazing to pass such a diversity of urban and rural settings in just a 20 minute walk.

3 comments:

  1. I love it! ...a little different from our power walks we used to do around Madison;)

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  2. Lita Napadensky here. wow! fascinating. What a wonderful enriching experience you are all enjoying. It is one thing to visit a place. It is yet an altogether different experience to live there.

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