Author Archives: bentleyjw

In Massachusetts, if you want to volunteer at your kids’ school, you need to fill out paperwork and have a CORI check (criminal background check). Even then, there are limits to what you can do. For example, you can’t drive other people’s kids to and from school field trips. Things are a lot more laidContinue reading “Volunteering in School”

In most of the world, if you have a driver’s license from the US you are allowed to drive in that other country. Since being here, I have started to doubt the wisdom of that policy. In particular, I’ve realized that I don’t understand what a lot of road signs mean. See if you canContinue reading “Driving (Part 2)”

I like to think that I’m a pretty good driver. For example, I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket in the US. Here things are a bit different. For one thing, tickets are all by camera, not cops. For another, they are very strict about speed limits. For example, we were in France a couple ofContinue reading “Driving (part 1)”

Christmas is a little bit different here. In particular, Sinterklaas is pretty different than Santa Claus. Santa (USA): Sinterklaas (Netherlands): Unfortunately, I only just found out about the December 6th thing. I had previously seen that the kids had the day off of school, but I assumed it was just a teacher prep day. IContinue reading “Santa!”

Sorry this post is so late … Some places celebrate Halloween here. Not a lot, but a few. Adelaide, Henry, and I went trick or treating with some friends. It was fun, but a little different than the US. One big difference was that people are more laid back. For example, Adelaide (age 8) ranContinue reading “Halloween”

On Tuesday and Wednesday I had the opportunity to visit Maastricht for a workshop at Maastricht University. Maastricht is in the very southeast corner of the Netherlands, nestled in-between Germany and Belgium. It’s about 2.5 hours from my house by train, but it’s a pretty easy ride: just a single transfer with regular trains. MaastrichtContinue reading “Maastricht”

While at Monet’s Gardens I saw the perfect fall tree. The brilliant yellows, oranges, and reds were breathtaking. After taking a few shots, I decided I should go get some close-up shots. I thought that surely this perfect tree would have some perfect leaves. However, to my surprise, I couldn’t find a single “perfect” leaf.Continue reading “Perfectly Imperfect”

Day 5: Monet’s Gardens Originally I thought I would cover our Paris trip in just two posts, but Monet’s Gardens ended up needing their own post so I had room for all the pictures. I was blown away. One thing I learned about Monet was that he cultured his gardens and then painted what heContinue reading “Paris! (Part 3)”

Day 4: Eiffel Tower and Downtown Paris On Wednesday we took the Subway back to downtown Paris. We let JJ navigate us using his phone (we bought the boys phones when we moved here). He was pretty excited to be in charge of that. We then explored the Eiffel Tower! It was great! We didn’tContinue reading “Paris! (Part 2)”

The kids had the week off of school, so we drove to Paris for holiday (i.e. vacation). We left right after lunch on Saturday and came home late Friday. Below I’ll talk about our trip in detail, but here’s the summary of what we liked most (the whole family voted): Day 1: Sunday We tookContinue reading “Paris! (Part 1)”