6:40. He stood on the stairs awhile, grumpy. I went back down on the couch. He came down a minute later and ordered me “Dada do TodoMath” as he disappeared around the corner to go to the bathroom. We worked on TodoMath, doing the 100 board puzzle, then he watched an episode of Wanda and the Alien. We moved pretty quickly, having the last of the banan bread for breakfast and making snacks and sandwiches for lunch. He watched more Wanda and the Alien while I took a shower and we left the house at 8:50.
We caught the 11 bus, which August has been wanting to take and rode to Bet Yehoshua Station. We figured out how to get a ticket from the machine, then went and waited on the platform. It was an open track, so we sat on a bench and I talked about the importance of not going past the yellow line. I talked about the stations in Seoul and how most had the walls that made them safer, etc. In talking about getting hit by trains he asked “Did it happen 2000 years ago?”
We rode on the first floor of the train. Not exactly a scenic ride. August was doing fine, talking to me a lot and looking out the window. A guy started talking to us, saying August seemed very smart, but the train was boring. He then complained about how his grandchildren were constantly looking at cell phones.
Anyway, off the train at Tel Aviv Station at 9:45. As we walked down stairs he saw a big poster with Ironman and Spiderman. I think he recognized Ironman (possibly from the big statue at Toys R Us in Seoul). Then, as we were walking down a hallway he first pointed to a deer on an ad, then at an actor on a Blade Runner poster and asked “Is that Paperman?” His first invented super hero makes paper.
We walked a couple minutes to Hayarkon Park to the east. We found the big playground and August at first said it was Ra’anana Park, as the big wooden playground looks similar. He wasn’t in a hurry to get out the backpack so we kept walking. We found the aviary and went in. There were workers tearing much of it apart, but no obvious ‘closed’ signs. One worked did see us while we were in there, but didn’t say anything. We stayed in the first room area and saw some birds. Basically, it appears like the aviary hasn’t been properly kept for 20 years. Signs were missing and when there were signs they didn’t match the birds inside. We got a good visit from a couple birds though, and the red lory did match the sign. August said “When I get home I’ll be a baby red lory.” We also saw the snake and skink room.
We left and walked around the corner to the river and the Israel National Trail. We walked a little ways to the east along the river, past the playground in the aviary, which also had a worker in it. August said “Real ice skating musk oxes.” Really random at first, then figured out it was a Treehouse book reference to having “Real ice skating penguins” in one of their rooms. We also saw a kayaker and watched her paddling on the river.
We walked back to the west along the river, crossed a stream and saw a little waterfall from what was an historic mill site. We then stopped for early lunch at 10:40. We talked about grinding wheat at Folk Museum in Seoul and the water wheel at Olympic Park. We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, then read a few chapters of 65-story Treehouse. Having finished the book we’ve started on a second reading, starting with the Egyptian chapter and the “king” (pharaoh).
We headed back towards the playground and he needed to use the bathroom. Walked past it and found a bathroom. There was an armed security guard with a group, like the armed guards that accompanied the school group to the Dead Sea. Also notable was the woman with headscarves everywhere. There were groups of them all using the swings together, which I knew Carly would especially like.
We got to the playground at 11:40. He first went on a swing, where he made bark for trees for me to assemble, banana bread dough for me to bake, and wires for me to use on electrical posts. He then played in the sand and dirt and I read. He found a bone, 2 or 3 inches long. Very clean and polished. He asked if it was human. I assured him it wasn’t – cat or dog or squirrel or something. I thought he’d want to keep it, but he buried it like the car at the beach: “It’s a treasure now…somebody else will find it.”
We then sat on the sand and read more Treehouse, reading to the end of chapter 11. We went and rinsed his hands off, then headed to the snack shop. He saw a couple women with head scarves and asked “Are those Kings?” I think because the pharaoh in the book has an Egyptian head scarf.
We stopped when he spotted a rolly slide. He wanted me to go down it first, so I did. But then he decided he didn’t want to go down. He crawled through a tube thing though and told another kid that came to use it too “Me first!” We looked at the snack shop, but it was busy being overrun by a school group of high schoolers. We wandered back to the playground, but after a minute went back to the snack shop when we saw the students leaving. We got a “pink flavor” slurpee. As we ordered he danced to the music playing.
We sat and took a long time drinking it as we had to keep waiting for it to melt. Finally, we headed back to the play ground and the big wooden play structure. Climbed up on it. Passed a group of teenage girls and they tried talking to him. He kept telling them “Go!” He made things worse as he went in a tunnel part I couldn’t follow through with the backpack. The girls continued to call to him and were rather annoying – it felt very Korean. They were saying “I love you!” and patting him on the head. So I understood his frustration. Eventually, I got him out and he went down a helter skelter to make his mistake. He asked me “Why did those girls want me to leave the park and go to their home instead of my home?” I think one of them may have joked something like “Come home with me!”
We climbed around some more and he found a stick which he said was a new Sticky. We used it to write some Hebrew in the sand, and he used it like a magic wand and we played a Hilo game, destroying robots. He wanted to leave the stick behind.
We stopped at the bathroom on our way out, and left the park right at 2. At the station there is a book stand out in the middle of the entryway. We were both excited to see the children’s book about an elephant walking on a wire. In Hebrew. It was one of just two books we could really read in Korean, and I was pretty sure we had kept our Korean version. Better yer was that it turned out to only cost 5 dollars, when I thought it was twice that.
We got a ticket and took the first northbound train. All seemed fine until I realized it didn’t stop at Herzliya. And then it didn’t stop at our stop. I figured an express train would at least stop at one of the Netanya stations, but it did not. The train didn’t stop until south Haifa. We had planned on going to the store once we got home, but that plan was out the window. Also, as we sat at Haifa and tried to figure out how to get back, it became clear that there aren’t really a lot of trains that stop in Netanya/Bet Yehoshua, which will rather limit our use of the train in the future as well.
One guy told me how to tell where a train stops and told me that they usually stop at Bet Yehoshua, but the next one didn’t. I had just figured out he was wrong – we couldn’t just sit and wait for a train to our stop – as that train was pulling away. The Moovit app was claiming we had to ride all the way back to Tel Aviv University and catch another line north. So, another 25 minutes of waiting. Luckily, August was all about 65-Story Treehouse and snacks, so we kept reading and reading.
Then, on the train (as we read more Treehouse) I looked at a map of the system and realized we should be able to get off at Binyamina and transfer to the ‘line’ that goes to Bet Yehoshua. Moovit (the app I finally found that does Israeli public transi
t) fessed up to this option, although wouldn’t work correctly with it. Anyway, so we transferred there and made it to the next blue line train. Read more Treehouse. I finally had him play iPad as my voice was wearing out and he watched/played Lucy and Pogo.
We got off and made our way to the highway and the bus stop. There was a pepper on the ground that he had fun stepping on. He said he needed to go to the bathroom, and I suggested he pee on the weeds/dirt at the edge. He wasn’t sold on the idea and I told him about how peeing on the grass in Pennsylvania. He seemed skeptical that he’d ever been excited by the idea. He held it until we got home.
The bus came and we made it home at 5:50. Carly helped him with the balancing activity in TodoMath. We had some dinner and she took him up for shower and I did dishes. He was asleep by 7:20.
Bone:
Casting a spell:
Looking out the train:
Train accelerating:
Reading together on yet another train:
