Our studious household

This morning the boys and I managed to get up and get moving on time, which is always difficult after holidays, but in a way it feels as though it is hardly worth the effort for such a short week. Tomorrow they only have the first two hours of school, because all the teachers (apparently in the whole city) have to go to some kind of pedagogical conference. In other words, we have to get up at six in the morning, just so that they can be home again by ten.

They both have tests in those two hours tomorrow, though, so ours has been a very quiet and studious household today. Paddy has a math test, and he has been getting more and more enthusiastic about it, even though I keep reminding him that it is a relatively futile endeavor to try to explain math to me, he has to explain it to his teacher, who is actually interested. Since he was having so much fun studying math, he was also quite amused by a story that has been circulating through various mailing lists today about the alleged arrest of an "Al-Gebra operative", with which he intends to entertain his math teacher tomorrow, while the class is enjoying the test (I suspect there are not many kids in his class having as much fun as he and one of his friends from Ghana are, but that kind of thing generally tends to escape his notice).

Christopher has a French test, so he has been busy filling up a separate notebook with conjugation tables. It would be nice if he could manage to just pass this one, but we'll see.

I feel as though I have been working hard all day too, but it is a bit frustrating to see that I really have very little to show for myself. I have mostly been doing background research, so I ended up reading far more pages than I actually translated. This would be a good time to go out for a drink with Peter, but Peter isn't here, and I don't really feel like going out by myself.
Hence this post.