Together Explorers

Beach at recess, beach after school, beach in the evening and all weekend long.
It's a treat to spend the year moving between cities and towns, culture and nature. But getting to live and learn on an island for five weeks is just something else! 🤩

🙏 Vera & Charity for some of the pictures used in this post.

It started with a blessing from our teacher, chef doña Mercedes, and ended in a full-on feast - last week’s cooking lesson was a whirlwind!

We made yuca arepas, moro (rice and beans), mangú (mashed plantains) served with fried cheese, fried salami and avocado. And a batch of ‘morir soñando’ (die dreaming), an exquisite drink made with evaporated milk and lemon juice.

It was delicious and a little messy and incredibly fun.

We’re grateful to doña Mercedes for giving us the chance to prepare (and eat!) such flavorful local dishes. And to Vanessa for coordinating and making this very authentic experience possible for our children.

It started with a blessing from our teacher, chef doña Mercedes, and ended in a full-on feast - last week’s cooking lesson was a whirlwind!

We made yuca arepas, moro (rice and beans), mangú (mashed plantains) served with fried cheese, fried salami and avocado. And a batch of ‘morir soñando’ (die dreaming), a truly exquisite drink made with evaporated milk and lemon juice. 🤩

It was delicious and a little messy and incredibly fun.

We’re grateful to doña Mercedes for giving us the chance to prepare (and eat!) such flavorful local dishes. And to Vanessa for coordinating and making this very authentic experience possible for our children. 🙏

A donkey, bright flowers, stray dogs, honking cars, puddles of muddy rainwater, swaying palm trees, a soccer field, zooming motorcycles, laundry hanging out to dry - and even goats.

These are fragments of what most of us see on our way to school every morning. 🤩

What’s the most special thing you see on your daily commute?

Goodbye, megapolis hustle-and-bustle, hello, Caribbean laid-back groove - we've arrived in the Dominican Republic for our third session! 🇩🇴

Take a look at the special friend some of us spotted on our way to school this morning! 😅

Five weeks of flavorful mangoes, guavas, and avocados, of churros somehow both crunchy and soft, and tacos al pastor that deserve their own love letter.

Five weeks of Frida and Diego, larger-than-life murals, and street art in every shade imaginable.

Five weeks of reflecting on life and death, honoring our loved ones who passed away, and going all in on Día de los Mu***os with a dizzying amount of parades, ofrendas, and shows.

Five weeks of ballet, F1, lucha libre, Michelin-rated restaurants, holes-in-the-wall, modern malls and pre-Hispanic history. Of trying to keep up with exhibitions, events, and shows that never seemed to end, and eventually giving in to a city that offers more than we could ever take in.

Five weeks of incredibly kind encounters, of living a regular life in a local neighborhood, of broken Spanish slowly getting fixed through weekly lessons.

Five weeks of incessant noise and crowded metros and insane traffic, too. Of colectivos that never came and stomach bugs that wouldn’t go away.

Five weeks of learning, doing, and observing. Being still and in motion.

It was vibrant, intense, fun, colorful, chaotic, exhilarating, and exhausting. It was beautiful.

Hasta la próxima, Mexico. 💚🤍♥️

Thank you Vera, Klaas and Jane for some of the pictures included in this carousel.🙏

A look back at our wonderful hands-on immersion in Mexican arts. 🤩

From carving intricate papel picado and illustrating custom Lotería cards to sculpting felt alebrijes and painting in the style of Frida, we dove into it all. We cast and decorated our own Día de los Mu***os masks, assembled colorful paper flowers, created portraits of our ancestors for our ofrenda, hand-poured scented candles, and pieced together Huichol-inspired bead coasters.

All those colors, crafts, and wild ideas came together in a very special Museum Night, where each kid proudly shared their work and creative process with parents.

Take a peek at our (pretty memorable) artistic journey!

What about you - what's your favorite Mexican folk art?

We dreamed of it, we learned about it, we got ready for it, and then… we lived it!

Experiencing Día de los Mu***os in Mexico City was something else - a whirlwind of culture, emotions and color. 💚🤍❤️

Have you ever experienced a celebration that completely took your breath away?

***os

Art, art, art everywhere! With Mexico City as our classroom, our art lessons come to life through alebrijes, street art, sugar sculptures, traces of the iconic Frida, árboles de vida, and larger-than-life murals all around.

Swipe to see the colorful, wonderful, and masterful art we’ve discovered on field trips - and in every corner of the city! 🤩

What’s your favorite form of Mexican art?



Museo Vivo del Muralismo
Museo de Arte Popular
Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares
Museo Frida Kahlo
Palacio de Bellas Artes

Goodbye Canada, Hello Mexiiiiico! 🇲🇽

We traded fall foliage for lush greenery, blue skies for gloomy drizzle (and an out-of-this-world, drenched-to-the-bones downpour), one colorful language (Québécois) for another (Mexican lingo), and a walkable town for a sprawling megalopolis.

One thing that didn’t change, though, is how busy we’ve been! At school, we enjoyed a great presentation by two of our mothers, an informative guided tour of the Centro Histórico, and a visit to the Centro de las Artes Populares, where everyone got to sample lots of local, chocolate-y treats. Not to mention, the kids completed their first art project (our academic focus this session) - some colorful 'papel picado' creations! 🤩

The rest of the time, we’ve started getting to know our neighborhood, practiced our Spanish, ridden the subway, eaten some delicious tacos, gone on the hunt for the best tortillas and after-school activities, screamed our lungs out at a lucha libre event, and reconnected with some old friends (with two families from our first year joining us for a lovely reunion).

Hoping our next four weeks here will be as rich as this first one, with an extra dose of ☀️

- We saw the leaves turn a gorgeous bright crimson red.
- We cheered for the Remparts de Québec at our first Junior Hockey League game.
- We learned about key events in Canadian history, including its darkest hours with its residential school system set up to “kill the Indian in the child”.
- We learned the subtle differences between maple water, syrup and butter, and enjoyed lots of poutine (even in chip form!)
- We made Victoria Park our backyard at recess, for our community meet-ups and BBQ and with after-school soccer, volleyball, D&D.
- We enjoyed various neighborhood festivals, picked up crispy, local apples at Le Grand Marché de Québec and took advantage of the efficient Service àVélo ride-sharing, e-bikes.
- We walked up and down dozens of stairs between the Upper and Lower parts of town.
- We spent some time in some amazing, next-level libraries.
- We listened to François who shared enlightening insights about the Quebec firefighters.
- We worked on our French, learned about francophonie and dipped our toes in ‘Québécois’.
- We visited museums, a shipyard and a citadel, toured the Parliament and the Old Town, and also designed our very own escape games, to make sense of all we had learned in the classroom.

As usual, our 5 weeks went by in a snap. Merci pour tout, Québec.

Je me souviens. Et nous nous souviendrons. ❤️



(🙏 Jane Liaw for capturing our encounter with François)