I love skype, it lets me call Germany or China or wherever we have exchange students from for cheap! This morning I had to register Jess for classes. She’s been on vacation so I haven’t had a chance to find out what classes she wanted to take. So this morning I called and spoke with her mom and her. I was worried about calling because I don’t know any German. Luckily they know English, very well actually. Why is it that American schools dumb everything down? I feel so inadequate after looking at the transcripts of my exchange students. It’s a given that they know at minimum 2 languages, and they take courses in junior high and high school that we don’t even see until college. I think if the schools here challenged the students to their full potential it would greatly help. Instead of teaching to the slowest students, seperate those that truly can’t keep up and challenge everyone else. Anyway, off my soapbox, I did get her signed up for classes and just need to call her to confirm them now. We’re all excited for her arrival!
Well, we did get to test out the gps this weekend, but not in any way I would have wanted to. First we used it to find a new quick way to our movie theater to watch Wall-E. It was a really cute movie and both girls behaved great and watched the whole thing. I’m always worried about taking them to the movie because they are both so young (5 and almost 2) so we went to a matinee, which usually doesn’t have many people. Suprisingly there were quite a lot of people there, and also a lot without kids. Last night at 9 pm our littlest (who will turn 2 next month, she’s growing so fast!) climbed up on the arm of the sofa and proceeded to fall off backwards head first onto the hardwood floor. We called Children’s Healthcare who advised us to take her immediatly to the emergency room. I would not even consider taking her to our local hospital so we jumped in the car and called my m.i.l. to get the address for Children’s Healthcare. We plugged it into the gps and were there 25 minutes later. It totally paid for itself with that trip. Oh and about our local hospital, even though it’s closer I could GUARENTEE we would have had to wait at least an hour to even be seen. It is a horrible institution. They made my little cousin (she’s 2) sit there for over two hours when her blood sugar was over 400. She has since been diagnosed (at Children’s) with type 3 diabetees. By the time she was taken by ambulance to Children’s her blood sugar was 790 and she was slipping into a coma.
The school board has officially accepted our new German exchange student! She should be arriving August 2nd. If you’ll recall, last year they denied Ray’s application, so we were concerned. Speaking of Ray, she arrives August 6th! The thought of helping take care of two teenage girls hasn’t frightened us, YET…
We ordered a refurbed tomtom from overstock and as soon as we opened it, one of the first things we did was add the celebrity voices. We currently have John Cleese, Eddie Izzard and The Daleks on there (yeah you caught me, I love a British accent) John Cleese is currently our guide, just because he is freaking awesome and funny. We’ve not tried to get lost with it, but it has navigated us to my work and to the in-laws safely. Maybe this weekend we will purposely get lost and see if it can help out.
With the 4th of July approaching, everything is all Americana right now. In that spirit I took the sample citizenship test on MSNBC. Here’s my results
You answered 65% of questions correctly. Here’s your rating: 65-80%: Hey, you may make a good citizen yet! Look at your wrong answers and a little revision should do the trick.
Think you can do better? (most likely, I suck at history!) The test is here.
She arrives August 2nd! Hopefully we will have as much fun with her as we did with Ray. Although I think German and Chinese girls might be a little different! :) We learned to cook some great Chinese food with Ray hopefully Jes can teach us some yummy German recipes. Anyone know an online site to get some (in English)?
As you may have seen in the previous post, our lovely Chinese exchange student returned home to Chengdu on the 6th. Before she left, she was treated to 3 separate going away parties. The first party was thrown by her friends from school, the second from her grandparents, and the last from us. Click the photo to see all of them.
The next day we attended the wedding of a friend who is also the sister to my daughter’s godparents. It was HOT. The temperature in Georgia hovered around 100 degrees, and went over it at some points. It was an outside wedding so we’re still recovering. My girl is getting to be a pro at this flower girl thing. She looked beautiful as always and had a great time!
Her plane should be taking off just now. Because of the security measures instituted after Sept 11 we weren’t even able to take her to the gate to stay with her until she left. We had to hug and cry at security. I’m gonna miss her so much. She’s going to be on the plane for over 16 hours, we stocked her up with movies and goodies to make the ride a little more bearable. I know she’s excited to be going home. With all that’s happened in Chengdu, she needs to see her family and friends for herself and make sure they are all ok. Her mother and father are even part of the rebuilding. Her mother is an architect and is surveying the buildings to determine which ones need to be rebuilt and her father is a construction engineer and he is rebuilding houses for those who lost everything. He is going to be taking her to show her some of the sites that were worst hit. When we got back in the car after leaving the airport; I asked my husband are you glad we did it? He was crying but said he was. All four of us were so sad to see her go, but wouldn’t have traded the experience of having her live with us for anything. She was a joy to host. If you’ve never had an exchange student, you should. It will change your life in ways you never thought.
(yeah you caught me, I love a British accent) John Cleese is currently our guide, just because he is freaking awesome and funny. We’ve not tried to get lost with it, but it has navigated us to my work and to the in-laws safely. Maybe this weekend we will purposely get lost and see if it can help out.
Her plane should be taking off just now. Because of the security measures instituted after Sept 11 we weren’t even able to take her to the gate to stay with her until she left. We had to hug and cry at security. I’m gonna miss her so much. She’s going to be on the plane for over 16 hours, we stocked her up with movies and goodies to make the ride a little more bearable. I know she’s excited to be going home. With all that’s happened in Chengdu, she needs to see her family and friends for herself and make sure they are all ok. Her mother and father are even part of the rebuilding. Her mother is an architect and is surveying the buildings to determine which ones need to be rebuilt and her father is a construction engineer and he is rebuilding houses for those who lost everything. He is going to be taking her to show her some of the sites that were worst hit. When we got back in the car after leaving the airport; I asked my husband are you glad we did it? He was crying but said he was. All four of us were so sad to see her go, but wouldn’t have traded the experience of having her live with us for anything. She was a joy to host. If you’ve never had an exchange student, 
