Adrian’s current favourite things in life, in no particular order.

• Activity: fiddling with small things, preferably something moldable, such as a lump of sticky putty, a small agglomeration of Plus Plus pieces, or a bread bag clip band. He has something like that in his pocket at all times, if not in his hands. Also: watching movies.
• Colour: green
• Movie: the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie (with all the big battle scenes), and Megamind.
• Video game: Spiderman, which he has nearly finished, and Fortnite.
• Book: Kalle Anka Pocket
• Food: hamburgers, without any ketchup, mustard or other dressing or sauce
• Fruit: raspberries and flat peaches
• Toy: Plus Plus
• Clothes: hoodies, shorts, and loose oversized T-shirts. Also socks and underwear with a food pattern, such as pizza slices or fruit. He’s very fond of his one pair of Happy Socks with bananas on them.
• Music: “Natural” by Imagine Dragons
• Best friends: Edward and Silas
• Looking forward to: our Estonia trip, starting third grade, and his birthday.
• School subject: maths
• Game or movie characters: Electro (a Marvel supervillain) and Leviathan (a Fortnite skin)
• Future job: builder
• Superpower: to be able to change his shape like Plastic Man does
• Toe: big toe. (Do you have a favourite toe? I don’t. But Adrian definitely does. He likes socks with holes where the big toe can peek out.)
• Thing: his plush fleece blanket. It even comes with us on many trips.
• Way of travelling: ferry to Estonia
• Drink: homemade elderflower cordial
• Shop: Gamestop, with all its Funko Pop figures.
• Time: lunchtime, because lunch is good
• Ice cream: Magnum Strawberry White
• Animal: koalas, because they are funny, and narwhals, because they are cool.
• Season: autumn, because that’s when his birthday is
• Youtuber: Matinbum and his video game videos

Ingrid is really looking forward to beginning seventh grade. She is really looking forward to the new school year at the her new school, for all kinds of reasons. She’s looking forward to a fresh start in a new class and making new friends. She will be going to a class with a maths and science profile, which is great because she loves these subjects and has been complaining for years that maths class is just too easy and she doesn’t get any more challenging tasks even though the teachers promise in each parent-teacher conference that she will. Her previous class was kind of noisy and relatively disorderly, and she has high hopes that this class will be better because it’ll be made up of students who actually want to be there and study.

And the new school itself seems great. There is a giant library, and all the classrooms (especially the science rooms) look inspiring, and the kids get their own computers and lockers. LOCKERS! Did I mentions lockers? The rest of the school could probably look like a junkyard and Ingrid would still look forward to being there because LOCKERS. She is so happy to get her own little corner where she can have her stuff and not have to carry it around or worry about it getting lost.

She is also looking forward to Comic Con in September. She will be browsing and buying pop culture stuff for an entire weekend and has saved up money for it long in advance.

The list of Ingrid’s favourites below is a mix of questions I asked and categories she added. It hadn’t even occurred to me that one would have a favourite YouTuber for example.

• Hobbies: reading, gaming, board games, drawing. She also likes learning odd skills, such as popping bottle top liners or distance-spitting cherry pits.
• Other activities: roller coasters and water parks
• School subject: maths when it is hard; crafts
• Future job: games programmer
• Best friends: Majken and Benjamin
• Words: kummaline (meaning strange or weird) and müstiline. Especially kummaline. It’s almost becoming a joke between us; she winks at me when she calls things kummaline.
• Colours: mint green and turquoise.
• Movie: Ready player one, hands down.
• Books: Classroom of the elite, Hunger games, Ender’s game. (School-age kids doing tough stuff.)
• Manga: Gun gale online
• Anime: Kakegurui
• Series: Steven Universe
• Games: Overwatch, Slime rancher, Wipeout, and the board game Mysterium.
• Music: Hamilton the musical, “Centuries” by Fall Out Boy, “Uma Thurman” also by Fall Out Boy, “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons.
• Youtuber: Aki Dearest
• Food: sushi
• Fruit: paraguayo peaches, watermelon, crisp green apples, blackberries, blueberries. She likes her peaches and apples much harder and less ripe than I do.
• Drink: Virgin mojito
• Ice cream flavour: mint chocolate
• Country: Japan, for its sushi, anime and manga
• Clothes: zip-up hoodies, especially her Ravenclaw hoodie
• Super power: transform into anything
• Thing: a large marshmallow-shaped super soft plushie with the face and ears of a dog, known in the house as “shmallow” or “pluffen”.
• Animal: hedgehog. Hedgehogs have become like a mascot for her, because her nickname at school used to be Iggi, and hedgehogs are called “igelkott” in Swedish, so she was “igelkotten Iggi”.
• Sport: dancing
• Place: the armchair in her room, and the corner seat in the sofa
• Shops: Firebox and Gamestop
• Means of travel: ferry, like the one that goes to Estonia
• Time: evening, when the house is quiet and it is dark outside and she can hang in her room
• Season: autumn, because it is beautiful with all the colors, and pleasantly cool so she can wear her hoodies, and because it’s when her birthday is.

(I haven’t done any monthly posts in a long time and probably won’t be picking that habit up again.)

Day 6 of 7. Valldemossa to viewpoints and back, 9.3 km.

The only walk option in the trip notes for today was a long and demanding one with a lot of ascent. We didn’t feel up to it so we improvised a walk of our own. From Valldemossa we followed the road down towards the beach, but then turned off the road onto a narrow, steep, twisty path that took us to the top of the cliffs. Up there we followed a nice wide path that took us to several viewpoints. And when we had walked far enough, we walked back the same way.

The clifftop path was mostly flat and straight, and often exposed towards the sea, so it was easy walking. The 9 km was less than we have walked on past trips, but more than we have done in the past few days in the heat. Today it was no effort. I purposely didn’t say anything about the distance to the kids, and they were surprised to hear how much they had walked without it really feeling like that much.

Our hotel here in Valldemossa has no pool. Understandable, given the area: it’s all small, narrow streets packed together on a rocky hill. After we’d had our daily ice cream, we just spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the shaded terrace and our air conditioned rooms, doing nothing much. We are really looking forward to going back home to more normal weather.