The mother of all missions

Nothing evokes California for me as much as the El Camino Real bells.
If you attended fourth grade in California, you will remember making a model mission. Or, perhaps, you watched your mom make a mission^*. This year, students can choose from a variety of projects, but California stopped requiring the models. My favorite memory of the unit was getting excused from school to spend a whole day with my mom to visit a mission.

Iris selected Mission San Diego because it is the first mission in Alta California. Amazingly, I had never been there. We went on Easter Sunday, so she didn't miss any school.
We were in San Diego anyway for a family reunion weekend. I was sick with a cold, but I went along with the others to minimize my contact to a family member in frail health who could not afford to catch my cold.

It's a functioning church, with services every hour on Easter Sunday. Parking was a mess; we were very glad we took public transit.
Iris and Father Serra.
A doorway.
Take a second look at the light fixtures.
Two happy and tired girls in my handiwork.
Iris in the same 'effefant' shirt, in June 2003.
* Just for the record, my sister and I made every last bit of our missions ourselves.

Aside:
Have you read your child's history textbook recently? I was surprised to read Iris' text and find that it gave even shorter shrift to the horrific treatment of Native Americans than my textbook 30 years ago. My sister-in-law of identical age says that her textbook was similarly vague. She thinks that might be the difference between San Diego and San Francisco school districts. The politics of the two cities is very different. At least my kid is not using Texas' science textbooks.

I went to the publisher's website to view supplemental materials. That did explain the genocide and why the Indians ran away and/or burned down the missions. If you read the book alone, it would have been a mystery.