It's looking more and more as though Emily is going to be homeschooled. I'm equal parts excited and terrified about the idea. There's so much scope for doing wonderful, interesting things with her. And there's so much scope for screwing up her education. It's an awfully big thing to take on ... Presumably the people who homeschool for religious reasons don't have these qualms. Must be nice to believe you have God on your side, and be certain doing the right thing. So much easier than having to figure everything out on your own.

Saw a van with a UU bumper sticker on it outside the restaurant we ate dinner at tonight, which was cool. We spent the day in Melbourne today - thought it would be fun to go to the beach and then go climbing at the gym down there. As it turned out, though, we got going so late that there wasn't time for the beach and climbing, so we picked climbing. We enjoyed being able to try some new routes, and we all climbed a lot. They have some auto-belayers there, (as well as lots of top ropes and quite a bit of lead climbing) which meant that the kids got in a lot more climbing than they usually do. I don't like the auto-belayers, though. It's a weird feeling, they seem to almost pull you up the wall at times. Sophie climbed extremely well today; I actually think she may be ready to be on the team next season, even though she's only just seven. We'll see how that goes.

We climbed till about six, and then we went and found a local Indian restaurant, where we all ate way, way, too much delicious food. Went back to the gym afterwards and climbed a bit more, but we'd all eaten too much, and were pretty useless.

All the people at the gym were very friendly - far more so than at the one here. I think maybe it's a small-town thing, this openness and chattiness? We exchanged email addresses with one guy; he goes outdoor climbing a lot, so he'll contact us next time he goes somewhere, and see if we want to join him. And we bumped into some of the people we'd met at the comps last climbing season. I am enjoying finding more of a sense of community these days. I feel quite rooted here, all of a sudden.

During the afternoon, my thoughts kept returning to the heart-rending story we listened to on NPR's This American Life on the drive down. The story dealt with a little Jamaican girl named Georgia, who'd entered the US on a forged visa at the age of three. Though she was something of an anomaly because of her age, she ended up in a kind of holding centre for kids who've attempted to enter the country illegally. Her story was so sad : first, abandonment by her mother, who sent her to the US, supposedly in search of a better life; then, forced separation from the social worker at the centre who wanted to adopt her, and from the other kids, who (according to the reporter, at least) treated her as a beloved little sister ... She was eventually sent back to Jamaica and her mother, who, four years later, was still trying to have her sent to America. So, so sad. I simply cannot understand a mother who'd give her child away, short of immediate threat to the child's life.

Made me want to hug my own kids, even though they were being exasperating and bickery at the time. You'd think that in a minivan they would all have enough space that they wouldn't get on each other's nerves. But apparently not. It'll serve them right if we go back to South Africa and buy an Uno or something.