A while back, I posted about my family’s trip across the northern border to Malaysia’s Legoland. This trip was much anticipated by both of our kids and they both are clamoring for a return trip, which is not going to happen. That doesn’t mean that Legos have diminished in their importance in our collective lives, however. In fact, we spend a lot of our free time building, taking apart, re-building, and playing with Legos on our living room floor. The Lego play space pretty much takes up the entire free space of the living room floor. I’ve already posted the accompanying video on Facebook, but also wanted to log it into this blogging arena for posterity and more reflection.

When we are building with Legos, Lu says that we are not *playing* with Legos. Lu makes a distinction that building is not the same as playing. Playing is when we “talk the legos,” which Lu loves to do. You have to talk a Lego and make it move around and interact with other Legos. If you aren’t doing that, then you are not playing, you are just building. When I played Legos or anything else as a kid, all of it was considered *play* to me – whether we were building Legos or setting up the People houses or setting tables at a fake restaurant. But for Lu, this doesn’t count as playing with them. While playing with ‘my girl’ – as Lu calls her – we decided to video how she was talking her, making our own version of an unscripted, unrehearsed Lego movie in the process. We still have a lot to learn in character and plot development, but I think she did a great job of depicting how much my girl appreciates coffee. Not only does this video sum up my life as a Lego, the fact that is done with a Lego indicates the amount of time we spend playing with – and building with! – Legos. We haven’t figured out a way to magically remove the coffee mug from her hand when she lies down, so we will have to continue to work with that constraint in future projects.

I can’t help but make a parallel to my work on my Fulbright with our Life in Legos. Some days, it doesn’t feel like I’m *working* on my Fulbright, that is, when I don’t make noticeable progress on my project. I spend time honing Google slides presentations for sharing sessions,  chatting informally with Singaporean teachers about their practice, their schools, their lives, and talking with my Fulbright colleagues about their work, among many, many other activities. Then, I realize (again!) that all of this is part of my Fulbright experience. I’m learning much, much more than I will ever be able to encapsulate in my project or my summative report. I have to remind myself every once in a while that nearly all of what I’m doing is part of my work and part of my learning. Unlike Lu, who likes to draw lines between building and playing, I prefer to smudge the lines between what is classified as productive work and what isn’t.