This week finds the boys and I hitting the road on a week long jaunt. Our first stop is our favorite, Margo and Peggy's! I fell down on the photography job and simply enjoyed their company. Brought homemade bread and a big bottle of wine. We enjoyed a cool quiet evening. Thank you for your incredible hospitality.
We took off early the next morning and headed for Chapel Hill, NC. Easy trip and a great hotel. You might be in NC when the hotel sheets are Carolina Blue! I highly recommend the Best Western University Inn if you ever travel to Chapel Hill. It is close to the gym where the Triangle Kendo Club practices and UNC. Again, for some bizarre reason, no photos! Except for the one of me blow drying flour tortillas for wraps. That was hilarious! It seems the ice in the cooler melted and the ziplock bag leaked. Rather than have soggy wraps for dinner, Max suggested we blow-dry them. Weird, but it worked and we enjoyed a great dinner (and me a well deserved glass of wine!) William, lucky kenshi, did get to practice with Mike Watson-sensei and the rest of the Chapel Hill Triangle dojo Wednesday night. Despite a gym without air conditioning and a constant stream of UNC students gawking at the doors, William pronounced it an excellent practice and hopes he can go back! Arigatou Gozaimasu!
A lousy day spent with the geeks at All Kinds of Minds and Center for The study of Development and Learning. Big thanks to my generous parents for footing the bill. We were all keenly disappointed in the evaluation process. They appear to have a rather large stereotype about homeschoolers and I was surprised to find how standardized test-bound the evaluators were. Our experience was diametrically opposed to everything written about this organization. I would never recommend anyone attend unless you are completely and utterly clueless about your own child. They gave us no new information or help regarding how William learns and how to approach lessons differently (even said he had no strengths! What a laugh!) and succeeded in upsetting everyone. The visit cost $900 included standardized tests adminstered by a psychometrist, despite the literature saying they did not use standardized tests, and the "demystification" process offered no useable information we have not already heard and tried for years.
