ED has decided that when we go home next summer for a visit she's going to take the GED so she can graduate at 16.  So she is studying away at the GED book we bought a few months ago.  Today she reached a section on Social Studies.  Now, I only just glanced at that part, but mostly what I saw were charts and graphs and things of that nature.  She looked at me and said, "I HATE Social Studies!"

I said, "No, you don't".  I pointed out to her that she LOVES geography.  And she really does.  This is the girl who wrote down the name of every country in the world and its square mileage and put them in order from smallest to largest.  I reminded her how much she loves learning about the people of different countries.  She's learned a lot about China just because we live here, of course.  But she's also been fascinated by Italy and the people and ways of that country.  She has studied the Italian language and, of course, Chinese as well.  These are ALL things she has done because she wanted to, because they interested her.  And these are all things related to what the text books call Social Studies. 

I said that all that had happened (as so often does) was that the writers of the book had taken a very interesting subject and turned into something as dry as dust.  That she shouldn't confuse the dust with the real, living, breathing thing.  I also mentioned that this was ONE reason I had never wanted her to go to school. 

As it happens, today we were invited by our neighbors downstairs to come and make joudsa together.  Joudsa is a veggie and meat filled dumpling that you eat with soy sauce and hot pepper.  So the lady of the house made up a big batch of the filling and put it on the table.  She had bought the pastry for them at the market, just small circles of thinly rolled dough.  We scooped up pinches of the filling with chopsticks and put it in the center of the circle.  Then we wet our finger in a bowl of water and dampened the edge of the dough and then folded them over and pinched the edges.  They come out looking something like a half moon with scalloped edges.  It was a lot of fun making a very traditional and delicious Chinese dish.  As we sat side by side working on this I had a thought.  I looked over at ED and said, "THIS is Social Studies". 

I thought I saw a light go on

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