My in-laws are safely here. It's so wonderful to see them again. They handled the long 30+ hour trip incredibly well, and were in really good shape when they arrived, considering their ages. My dad-in-law is 78, my mom-in-law just a few years younger. The kids were ecstatic to see them. Steve especially; he has such a strong bond with them. It was very touching to see him re-united with his grandparents.

Something interesting : I hadn't realised how uneasy my mom-in-law has been about the whole homeschooling thing. Within the first hour, she'd asked me all the standard questions - the socialisation thing, the how do I know if she's keeping up to school standards thing, the evaluation thing ... I really thought that we'd explained all of that over the course of the last year, but apparently not. Hopefully seeing how homeschooling works on a day-to-day basis will put her fears to rest.

Something that I found interesting was that she mentioned that she knows of several people in their circle of acquaintances who're homeschooling their kids, but not for any reason that a US homeschooler might have. In their case, it's a financial thing. Apparently the school fees in the old govt schools like GHS, Maritzburg College etc are now pretty darn steep, so some people are actually choosing to homeschool out of economic necessity. So strange to think that homeschooling could be cheaper than government schooling. Her circle of acquaintances isn't at all a representative one, though, so I have no idea how widespread this phenomenon is.