seward slides

day 5 summer vacation 2011

we found and rode the seward street slides. i had heard about these for years and finally checked them out. two old concrete slides dug into a hillside by a community garden, with a couple nice curves and drops. there was a community garden above and an old playground below. the one on the right is fastest, and riding on cardboard adds a little speed. of course i met someone there i vaguely knew--a fellow public school mom (sunset, an awesome school) and teacher (at alvarado). it made me wince inside to see her reaction about miles being at starr king--"the mandarin immersion program, i hope." i guess it will be a while before people consider starr king as a good school for kids in all programs. kind of sad.

we park-hopped to walter haas where we hooked up with two of miles' classmates and ate hard-boiled eggs and cherries and olives. the girls rollerbladed, miles played soccer and got loud, and...maya did several monkey bars on her own!!! something just clicked for her. very exciting.

grey sky, summer cold, miles at a friend's house, rocket sleeping on a pillow.

little city things

i keep writing serious posts and deleting them. all my worries and interests are being written about so well by many others. i will just keep documenting the little details of our lives in order to try and better understand why we stay here in this expensive earthquake land.

i grew my first batch of sprouts, broccoli sprouts. pretty tasty. just soak, drain, rinse and drain for a few days and here they are, a bowlful of hippie food.

this is a view of the hamilton rec center from the south side of geary. it's a huge sparkling rec center in the western addition, with a playground, soccer fields, batting cage, tennis and basketball courts aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnd.................

check it out! the pool (and indoor basketball courts and tot area) is in the building glowing in the distance in the previous photo. here is one of two water slides at the very large pool. tough love lifeguards all around, water which was warm enough for all but the smallest of our group (maya is supposed to look cold in this picture), sunny warm air, huge windows. i rode the pictured water slide about ten times, ahhh, eyes closed made it seem even faster. there is another water slide i rode once, which is super fast and high and dumps you out about eight feet above the water. fun but a little painful. afterwards we walked over to the japantown mall and splurged on sushi. miles even ate some avocado. we sat in the peace tower and thought a little about war and peace. miles mentioned that the atom bomb turned the beach to glass, and we bought a book called hello, maggie, about life in a japanese internment camp.

and at starr king last week there was a guest author, maya cristina gonzalez for the books for dinner event. our maya stayed home which was a shame because she would have loved the author's hair. she showed the kids all kinds of secrets she paints into her work--they were entranced.
that's all for now.