The riots abate
After nearly two weeks of intense violence (almost exclusively against property, not against people) in the Paris suburbs (and rarely in Paris itself), the riots have subsided considerably. A curfew has been imposed in the affected suburbs, which has gone a long way toward restoring calm. Government officials have also started talking about addressing some of the social inequality issues that are at the root of the unrest, and that seems to have calmed things further.
Meanwhile, all of our daily activities have been unaffected. Jonah, who usually likes to try to win sympathy by saying he didn't have a good day at school (despite all evidence to the contrary), reported yesterday, "Mommy, I actually had a good day at school." Ella, who always has a good day at school, had a highlight today of a science show. The presentation seems to have focused mostly on experiments with air and other gases (the old hard boiled egg sucked through the narrow bottle neck as a flame in the bottle creates a vacuum trick, among others). She was fascinated, and reported each experiment in careful detail at dinner. Maybe she and her cousin Jake will team up eventually as fellow scientists.
In my research, we reached the point where we go into the school and propose a snack to the children after they have eaten lunch to measure the extent to which each child eats in the absence of hunger. The woman whom we have hired to do the interviews with the kids has classes herself in the afternoon, so she couldn't go. So, I, along with my graduate student collaborator, went to Clermont de L'Oise to do the testing. Before proposing the snack we ask each child a series of questions to determine if they are full, if they like the proposed snack, etc. I would never had imagined it possible, but I conducted half of the interviews myself in French. And, what's more, the kids appeared to understand everything I asked. The "gouter" or snack was a big success and I think we got some excellent data. We will start data collection in a second school in Paris next week.
Abe has been working hard on synagogue details, such as the design of the bima and the torah reading table. The ground breaking last Sunday was a huge success, with 500 people in attendance and a very flattering article in the Toledo Blade. He was sorry he couldn't be there for it.
Meanwhile, all of our daily activities have been unaffected. Jonah, who usually likes to try to win sympathy by saying he didn't have a good day at school (despite all evidence to the contrary), reported yesterday, "Mommy, I actually had a good day at school." Ella, who always has a good day at school, had a highlight today of a science show. The presentation seems to have focused mostly on experiments with air and other gases (the old hard boiled egg sucked through the narrow bottle neck as a flame in the bottle creates a vacuum trick, among others). She was fascinated, and reported each experiment in careful detail at dinner. Maybe she and her cousin Jake will team up eventually as fellow scientists.
In my research, we reached the point where we go into the school and propose a snack to the children after they have eaten lunch to measure the extent to which each child eats in the absence of hunger. The woman whom we have hired to do the interviews with the kids has classes herself in the afternoon, so she couldn't go. So, I, along with my graduate student collaborator, went to Clermont de L'Oise to do the testing. Before proposing the snack we ask each child a series of questions to determine if they are full, if they like the proposed snack, etc. I would never had imagined it possible, but I conducted half of the interviews myself in French. And, what's more, the kids appeared to understand everything I asked. The "gouter" or snack was a big success and I think we got some excellent data. We will start data collection in a second school in Paris next week.
Abe has been working hard on synagogue details, such as the design of the bima and the torah reading table. The ground breaking last Sunday was a huge success, with 500 people in attendance and a very flattering article in the Toledo Blade. He was sorry he couldn't be there for it.
posted by M-E Family at 10:22 PM
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