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James came back from school and he told me that a kid in his class taught him how to “get more girls to like him.”  I leaned back in my chair, expecting something cute.

Instead, it was sobering.

“Ben says that you have got to be a little bit bad for the girls to like you,” he starts.

“How?”

“Well, you got to let the girls catch you being mean - not too mean but you know, like saying stuff like, ‘Yo, yo yo, who’s your mother?’” And here, he did a little sign with his hands, I don’t even know what you call it.  He extended his thumb and little finger but kept all his other fingers in. (You know, the ones that you see the rappers do in music videos)

“Girls like it when you treat them bad. That is why Ben has three girls chasing him at recess, trying to kiss him.” (He had also reported last week that he was trying to get away from girls who were trying to kiss him - which I thought was hilarious)

Ok, I know I should have called this blog “The Nomadic Mum” blog because we are always on the move, or thinking about moving!

As I blogged about a few days ago, we have initiated our house hunting process because we have plans to put the boys in a private Christian school, run by our church.

For the longest time, I cannot remember how long, we have wanted our boys to have a consistent Christian upbringing, not only reflected (occasionally!) at home but also at school and those around them.  Imagine this, a child spends about 10,000 hours of his life at school. That is a lot of hours for a person to be influenced and taught by those around them!

We are somewhat happy/unsure with the school that our church runs - it is pretty exclusive, not in the grand sense, but exclusive as in opposite of “inclusive.”  You have to be a member of the church in order for your child to attend the school. That involves a 10 week course and a rigorous interview about yourself and your walk with Christ. In November, we became members of this church, which we think is a fantastic church.  The kids are great there, so polite, so kind. James has started addressing Matt and I, “Sir” and “Ma’am” just like some of the children when they address their parents. It is cute but I don’t really insist that he does that - it is his choice.

However, there is lot of good things going for their current public school.  The kids are learning so much! James is in an accelerated class.  He does Chinese once a week, Cameron learns French. It is a small school, no more than 400 kids from Kindergarten to Grade 5. They serve hot meals at the cafeteria and the bus comes to pick them up. It is all free, except for lunches.  James has a friend - the one who beat him up at the start of the year? He has become James’ best friend. I just got a call from the boy’s mother because they are going to form a baseball team and James has been invited to join the team. For years and years, we wanted James to fit in, to have friends.  He now has them.

Cameron’s teacher is working very hard on improving his behaviour on a daily basis. He has gone off the separate carpet and they are now using tokens to help him monitor his behaviour.

If we move the kids to the Christian school, there would be no more foreign languages. No more accelerated classes. We would never find out if James or Cameron qualified for the magnet school or gifted program run by the school county here. (tests run in Grade 3)  We would be living in a place which is pretty remote. Because of that, we would have to buy a second car so that Matt could drive to the train station. He cycles to the station at the moment, using the bicycle paths that run outside our estate.  The area where the church is does not have a bike path and it would be unsafe for him to cycle, especially when it snows.  Higher fees, added expense of a car, undesirable housing location, less options offered at the school for a Christian education.

The other option is for us to move states - to the other side of DC, to Virginia, where we originally put down deposit for another private Christian school. The area we would be looking at is only minutes away from downtown DC and an established area. The downside is that the school only goes up to Grade 8 and we would not want to buy a house there, only to move again after 6 years when James is ready for high school.

The obvious conclusion is to stay put where we are but we want to take this step of faith. It is a big step of faith for us, that what we are doing is the right thing by our boys.  School is more than just academics to us.

This is a very difficult decision for us to make and we have to come to a conclusion by the end of Feb.  Our heads are swimming! What to do?

James is doing very well at school, it is so funny - he is in Grade 2 but he spends only one and a half hours with his room teacher for the whole day.  Most of the time, he is in another two classes, for accelerated Maths and accelerated reading. So his teacher who doesn’t spend that much time with him, gave us his report and said that he was at midway through Grade 3 curriculum (don’t know how they measure this but they have very detailed tests and reports) so we were wondering - why not put him in Grade 3?

Socially, he seemed to be doing fine - the bullying issue during soccer was addressed.  Apparently many parents have complained about what goes on during soccer and two aides have been brought out into the field to monitor what goes on.  However, James has risen above all the bullying and has begun to fight back, verbally of course.  I am so pleased that he is finding his feet.  However, the teacher noted that he has no close friend at school yet and he is sort of “hovering” on the outside, quite happy to be on the fringe.

Meeting with Cameron’s teacher this week, and am a little anxious about what she will have to say about him. Obviously, there will be no surprises but still,I don’t like it when I know the report is not going to be positive.

A 44 year old teacher at Thomas Wootton High School, Theresa Cunningham Duarte has been sentenced 6 months in jail for selling cocaine to at least two of her students. I read this in today’s local newspapers, the Gaithersburg Gazette. You can read more about it here.

Thomas Wootton HS, has been ranked 68th on the top 100 public high schools in the USA.  It is an amazing school, with more than 30% of the students being Asians.  That is the school we have chosen our boys to go to when they get to high school as their elementary school feeds into this school.

I have also been to another website, which I won’t even bother mentioning here where people “talk bad” about each other.  There is a whole section devoted to schools all over the USA, from elementary schools to colleges.

Just reading about what goes on in the schools just sickens me, maybe I am living in the dark ages but kids from that school talk about sexual conquests, which girls have the biggest boobs, people on drugs, I know that this happens in a lot of high schools in the USA and heck, maybe even in Singapore.  Just reading about it brings it sharply into focus that it is real - and reinforces to us that we do not want our boys to grow up through the public school system, even though it is a fantastic school.

James had a battery of tests during the first week of school and at the end of the week, a letter came home from the principal to say that a group of children in Grade 2 will be selected to do accelerated Maths, ie, they would move on to Grade 3/4 Maths.  In November, all the Grade 2 kids will be tested to see who qualifies for the gifted and talented program.  All the public schools will do this exercise and the cream of the crop will go to a separate school for the Highly Gifted and Talented. If James is selected - I am not sure of his chances - he will have to take a separate bus and go to a different school from Cameron. I am also not quite happy about this prospect.

This is one of the reasons why we chose to put the children in the Montgomery County schools. We were already set on living in Virginia, had even put a downpayment on a private school, which we did not get back in the end.

Last week, hubby went to Back To School night, where parents would attend a short PTA meeting and then disperse to their children’s respective classrooms. Matt discovered that James was one of the 30 children in the accelerated Maths class but after talking to the reading teacher, we discovered there were “gaps” in his writing skills.  He reads at an age appropriate level, but his writing was not developed. His previous school was very strong in promoting reading, exploring the arts and music but that was as far as it got.  The Maths curriculum left a lot to be desired. We had James tested by a British teacher to see where his reading/writing/comprehension levels were at and she reported the same thing.  She questioned what the teachers did at his school and I felt my hands were tied because I was already supplementing his Maths at home.  If there is one thing I do not really know how to teach, that is writing. I mean, look at the way I write. I write the way I think, straight out of my mouth, sometimes without thinking.

So I am hoping, with the very high standards of education here, that James will get the help he needs. I feel frustrated that James kind of “wasted” his year last year; he was seriously not being challenged at school at all. I had to fight hard to get his previous school to let him skip one school year but they put him in an accelerated Math class which involved doing three very hard questions - some of which I found difficult as well. There was no teaching, the teacher would just go through the answers on the worksheet.  He had a lot of fun last year though - this year, he comments that school here is boring because it is all about “work” - reading and writing. I am more traditional, I believe that is what school is about, not one big playdate, not especially if you are paying so much in school fees for it.

I don’t have a lot to do with the boys’ school at this stage. It is very different from their previous schools in Singapore, where parents could just walk in and out of the classrooms.  I felt connected with the teachers, I knew what was going on.  SAS used to send us many emails - it satisfies the control freak in me.  We would meet up one on one twice a year to set goals for our boys and review them by the second half of the year.

This school they are attending is so different.  Parents are not allowed past the office, unless they are volunteering. I don’t have notes from the teachers about their progress. I have not even talked to Cam’s teacher to tell her that we are new in this country.

However, it is a blessing that we are in such a great county.  It produces many of the top 100 schools in the USA and they are so competitive.  Cam has been identified for ESOL already (I think they struggle with his accent and must think he cannot speak English)  A note came back from James’ class to say that they are accelerating his maths to grade 3. I think there is a whole group of them who are doing this.  Back in SG, I had to fight for James to get more challenging stuff.  This is only after a week in school.  I am very happy about that!

I also like how the higher grade kids are given positions of responsibility, there are kids who come to school early to man the traffic. (patrol duty, they call them here.) There are kids in each of the busses taking care that the children are not rowdy and keeping safe.  When they come down from the bus, they stop traffic to let children cross the road.  That is so neat!

The boys started school on Monday and the first day went quite well. It is so nice to be able to walk to school, pass by a creek, a pond and see some ducks before getting there! I say a little prayer for the boys on the way to school to set the tone to their day.

J likes his school very much, a big plus!  Cam came back that day and I noticed he hadn’t eaten his lunch because he had thought it was like his kindergarten in Singapore, where it was only a 3 hour program and he would have a 10 min snack. He usually skipped his snack and would come home for a hearty lunch. I asked him why he did not finish it and he told me that he ate some pie that the teacher bought him.

Imagine my surprise when at 4.30pm that day when he suddenly went beserk and I mean, he was clawing and crying, a total meltdown, the poor boy.  He was starving and admitted the story about eating a pie was a fib. I don’t know why he did that but it taught me a lesson to offer the kids a snack right after school. They are so used to eating big, hot lunches but we have now relegated to eating cold cut sandwiches.

After that first day drama, C seemed to settle in better.  I was having some tough days dealing with C, he seemed to enjoy pushing the boundaries. He told me that at school, he went to the sandpit and he felt as if his body had electric shock from touching the sand.  To me, that just spells “sensory” issues and wonder if other things around the environment are affecting him as well which account for his behaviour these last few weeks.

Our things have arrived from Singapore, hurray! It is so wonderful to have furniture in the house. I am slowly unpacking and enjoying the process! I expected to be like, ~nyah! about it, but we have some new Chinese furniture and it is nice to try to fit things into a new place. I have to think about what to fill the gaps on the walls with, colour coordination, etc. I have given up buying from shops and prefer buying eclectic stuff from craiglist.

The weather here has suddenly done a drastic change. From absolutely hot and sweltering, it has become cold - maybe it’s because we have been living in the tropics for so many years. Last week, we were wearing shorts and t-shirt but I am in my layers. It is down to the 50s deg Farenheit (about 10 deg Celcius) in the mornings but it gets to a lovely mid 20s in the daytime. Matt hurriedly ordered wool blankets and some heavy duty duvets or doonas from New Zealand. They had to be wool ones because C has very bad dust mite allergies.

People here are very nice! I can’t believe how many people have come up to me when I stood outside my house and introduced themselves and said hello, come over for playdates, please use our basketball court etc.

A good start!

Sorry, been missing in action because I have been so jet lagged. Back in Singapore and boy have I missed the heat. It was about 18 degrees Celcius in Washington and NY, however, it rained a whole lot more than normal.

I flew there on the Airbus 380 on business class to London and it really made a huge difference. I did not feel tired at all.

This was how wide the seat was.

Another view. There were 4 seats in a row. 

I am happy to report that we have found a school and home near the school. It was such an impromptu decision on my part. What had happened was that we went to the USA the first time to look at some schools. We looked at Virginia and liked some of the public schools there.  For this trip, because we had heard so much about the good schools in Maryland as well, we stuck in two appointments with some public schools there.  We were set on Virginia and I was just going to go the second time around to find a house and perhaps look at 7 more schools.

However, when I was in Maryland I really liked the curriculum because they accelerated children who were able to go further by giving them work from a grade above. Based on that, I made a decision to go with the school there, without even seeing the children there. Everything then seemed to fall in place, I found a really neat place within walking distance from the school. Also there was a community area behind our house, which had tennis courts, a pool and a river that ran through a small park.

So with all that done, I went up to NY for a weekend of catching up with my cousin Ken, see my friend Ann Marie and for a spot of shopping.  I really LOVE NY. It is very much like Singapore without the aggression and modernity.  If Matt were given a job there, I would have jumped at the chance to move there without hesitation.

Ann Marie and I were nuts - we knew Robert Pattinson was filming “Remember Me” in NYU and we were walking everywhere looking for him. We spotted Kirsten Dunst outside a restaurant, I walked back and forth to see if I could ask for an autograph but she kind of freaked out I think and went into the restaurant.

Here are some shots of Hoboken, NJ and the view from Ken’s apartment overlooking the Manhatten skyline.

Ken’s apartments.

View from Ken’s apartment

Ken. I have not seen him in over 8 years and the last time we met, we did not have much of a chance to catch up. It was great seeing him again after all these years. He is such a great fashion advisor! Looking forward to more shopping trips with you in the future!

I really liked the buildings in NY. This one in particular, i don’t know what the name of it was but I love the details on the building.

Sorry for being absent for a while. I am now in the USA, on my own, looking at several schools before the school year ends.  Matt was so sweet, he organised all the appointments for me so that I did not have to do much, just turn up!

I flew on the Airbus 380 on business class, thanks to Singapore Airlines points, they have to be used up by Sept this year so what a lovely way to travel. It really makes a big difference travelling on business class, especially with long distances. I could lie flat, even though I did not sleep, I felt rested.

So now I am in Arlington and feeling very much at sea. My parents came to Singapore again and everytime I see them, I feel really sad and don’t feel like leaving Asia at all.  I still have not seen a school that has jumped out at me and this is why I am back here. However, I have found 2 very good public schools but as they are very good areas, rental properties are rare houses are expensive to buy in this area. I am very glad that we sold our property in Bishan so that we at least have some sort of down payment to afford a house here.

Anyway, I am at a public computer place so I have to scoot. Will write to update again.

This is the tradition that the school does on the last day. Mr Schunk and Mr Hoss are there, faithfully doing their duty - with obvious love and care for the children.  It was so loud that my neighbour heard it, and we live about 3 blocks away from the school! There are so many buses as you can see them pulling out, one by one near the end and this is only the primary (K-Grade2) and Intermediate (Grade 3-5) schools!