Birds III

Before I load the last three photos from the hike, I’ll share something I heard on the radio this morning on the way to the pool. A survey of 29 of the world’s richest industrialised countries found Dutch kids are the happiest. The United Kingdom came 16th and the United States ranked 26th, just above Lithuania, Latvia and Romania – the three poorest countries in the survey. "Children from the Netherlands were in the top five in each of the categories assessed: material wellbeing; health and safety; education; behaviours and risks; and housing and environment."

This article goes more into the whys and wherefores. What the radio commentator focused on was that most toys in the Netherlands are hand-me-downs. One day a year, kids take their toys to school and exchange them. Imagine that. Also, children don’t get homework until they are six (apparently that’s late) and they are tested later than kids in other countries. I’ve noticed here that the tests kids take at 11 determine which secondary school they can attend. There are four different tests--the ones you take depend on which schools you want to go to, so kids may take two or three of these tests--very stressful. Apparently Dutch kids don’t get involved in competitive sports at a young age either. I despair when I see fairly small boys suited up for American football. WTF? It appears the Dutch kids are given a great deal of freedom and enjoy the kind of childhood I had--largely unsupervised. I rode my bike everywhere and had pretty free rein.

Which is maybe why I enjoy rambling around the Mournes (lame segue). We walked for more than four hours, with a stop for lunch. And many stops to wait for the slowest person in the group. The group is really good about not letting the slowest person feel left behind. Someone always drops back to talk to him or her.

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