Author: Robin Chartier

MAP

This week at school Carter has been doing MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) testing. It’s a computerized assessment that is done in schools in the US to see how students measure up in the areas of reading, writing and math. The thing that is special about the test is it is tailored to the individual student’s performance. If a student is answering the questions correctly, they move into harder areas of the test, but incorrect answers guide the student toward easier questions. Sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure for the testing world.

When Carter came home and said, “I got 186 percent on my MAP test,” I knew that was a bad sign. When Josh pointed out that 186 percent isn’t possible he said, “Oh yeah, I got 186 points . . . I think. Other people got like 200, but I don’t care.” Not caring about school stuff? Shocking.

Carter: “It was OK. Mostly boring though. I just read the top part and guessed at the answers. I had to go fast because they said if you didn’t finish you could come back and finish in the afternoon and I didn’t want to go back.”

Me: “Were you even trying?”

Carter: “Eh, it didn’t matter if I got them wrong because my teacher told me if you get them wrong, then the questions get easier. We did the writing test today and we have the reading test on Saturday.”

Me: “How do you do a writing test on the computer?”

Carter: “I don’t know.”  

Me: sigh

I went and looked up information on the MAP test — it looks like there is no writing test, just reading, science and math. I can’t wait to see these test results . . .

One of the best parts about Josh’s course is that class starts at 7am so he often gets home by 2 in the afternoon. Not so great for him to have to get up early, but fun for us to be able to go do things as a threesome before the boys come home from school. 
One thing we like to do is go sit at Starbucks. We could drink coffee at home, and at $4.50 for a grande cap it’s not cheap, but it’s one of the few places where the employees speak Arabic and they all know Josh by now and chat with him as they make our drinks.


We decided Camille is finally old enough to get her own drink. We started her on the steamed milk — we’ll save the harder stuff for when she turns 2.

I love that the mall is modern and has places like Chili’s and Cinnabon, but the people walking by in dishdashas and abayas show that we’re clearly in the Middle East.

She’s mad because she wants to hold the cup herself, but she keeps trying to turn it upside down or take the straw out so Josh is trying to “help” her. I’ve always told people that she has no problem telling us exactly how she feels . . .

close call

You know how the dishwasher wasn’t working? Well, a guy came out to fix it two days ago. His version of fixing it is he fiddled with the latch a little bit so now when I try and close it it pops open, but if I hip check it using all my body weight then it should stay closed. I can only guess how long that “repair” is going to last, but that’s how you do things here.

Well after the dishwasher fix, suddenly the breaker that controls the dishwasher/washer/dryer started tripping. If we weren’t running the dishwasher and the dryer at the same time it was OK, but I decided to have Josh put a work order in anyway. I went to a brief at the embassy last week and they said if we ever have any electrical issues to let them know because the embassy will send out their own people to check them. So this morning the electrician arrived, walked into the kitchen and immediately said, “That is the wrong plug on the washing machine.” He felt it and it was HOT, burn your fingers scorching hot, and when he unplugged it from the wall we saw this:

You don’t get the whole effect without the smoke and smell of burning plastic, but you get the picture.

They cut the plug off the washing machine (of course it was running and the machine is full of water and clothes so hopefully they’ll be back before we have moldy soup in the washer) and are going to see if they can locate a heavy duty plug to replace it. They also figured out that the voltage of the appliances is too much for the circut breaker so they have to get approval from the landlord to switch it out for a higher rated one. Or something like that. Between the dude’s accent, my less than stellar hearing, and my limited knowledge of electrical work, that’s what I got out of the conversation. I’m just glad I didn’t have a kitchen fire to blog about.

Baby girl loves books. I think Calvin was the same way as a baby, but it’s hard to remember that far back. I’m positive that Carter was not excited about books and all I remember about Caleb and books at this age is he liked taking them and throwing them in the bathtub. When it was full of water. I went 30 years without ever having to pay for a library book and once he came along I had to pay for 3 in 3 months. That stopped my trips to the library until he outgrew the baptizing books phase.

But I see a blooming bibliophile in my little girl and it makes me happy.

Carter is supposed to read for 30 minutes every night for homework. So what book did he check out from the library? The Guinness Book of World Records. I suspect he’s just looking at the pictures of the man with the longest fingernails or the most facial piercings (really gross, btw) instead of actually reading the text. I asked him to bring home something different so next time he checked out Ripley’s Believe It Or Not instead. :sigh: He also counted this time that he was “reading to Camille” as part of the 30 minutes. He is not a fan of the books.
***In the background you can hear Calvin showing off his superior spelling skills. Great reader, horrible speller. 

(The “Hallelujah” is because he finished his homework.)

Our desktop is cursed

This is the story of our poor “new” computer. About a month before we moved to Egypt we replaced our desktop computer. It was almost 7 years old and it was *really* slow. Our original plan was to hang onto it until we came back from Egypt because who wants to risk sending new electronics overseas? But its time had come. Josh reformatted the hard drive a bunch of times and it was still creeping and freezing so we opted to get the least expensive tower possible as a new family/kid computer. I think it was around $350.

So we sent the computer along with the rest of our worldly possessions to Egypt where they got held up in customs and sat for months and months. By the time the computer arrived here the kids were overjoyed to finally be able to play some of their games, get on Webkinz, Lego.com, etc. (I tend to be a little possessive of my netbook and don’t like to share.)

Josh unpacked it all, set everything up, plugged it in and BOOM! I was in the other room and for a second I had flashbacks to Egypt when the artillery fire shook the house. It sounded like something exploded in the living room. It turns out that even though the computer is 110/220 compatible (Josh checked before plugging it in), there is an internal switch that wasn’t switched and the electrical current blew out the power supply. So more waiting. Josh found a place to fix it — $75 for a new power source and the kids were happy.

Now the kids are on the computer every day, mostly related to school. As an aside I’m really impressed by how they are using technology at TAISM. Calvin is creating collaborative documents online using Google Docs with his classmates, setting up a newsreader using RSS feeds, tracking stock quotes, and pulling homework assignments from the school network and submitting them via email. The younger boys have classroom blogs and they’ve been assigned to log in and “follow” the blog, post comments and eventually post content. That doesn’t include all the in-class computer skills they are working on. All that to say that not only is the computer in use all the time, but they often are jockeying for screen time so they can do their homework. In those cases I have to surrender mine in the name of education. :sigh:

So yesterday two guys came to fix our perpetually leaking air conditioning units. Each room has 1 or 2 that are built into the wall and the embassy techs came out last week and said they needed to be removed from the walls, fully cleaned and overhauled. So they submitted that info to the landlord and then the landlord contracts for the work. Well the people they send aren’t always the brightest bulbs and yesterday as they took the AC unit off the wall, they spilled water on the computer tower and something important must have gotten wet because although the light comes on, nothing is happening. Our computer is broken, again. (And Lucy did tell them that they needed to cover our stuff with the plastic that they brought to protect the floor, but like I said, not the brightest bulbs.)

In America you would just submit a complaint to the company and they would repair or replace the unit, right? We could do that, but I strongly suspect that the company wouldn’t be paying a thing, and would take the cost entirely out of the employee’s wages. And since all of the guys who come to work at our house are low paid Indian or Pakistani guys who speak almost no English and are here working to send money to their families back at home, the cost of a computer repair would financially devastate them. If you saw how some of these guys live, you’d feel the same way too. One guy was here painting our fence for two days who spoke zero English. He was dropped off with no food or water in the middle of summer. He painted v.e.r.y. slowly, but if you figure he had to be getting paid v.e.r.y little per hour, it probably evened out somewhat.

We decided since we can afford it, we’d rather eat the cost then worry that some kids are going to go hungry back in India because their dad is working to pay off our computer repair. So it’s back to the computer repair shop for us. Hopefully it’s a quick and easy fix because until then I’m going to have to get really good at sharing.