june 07, 2010:  the mailman did not bring my letter and yet...

All week-end I obsessed over the mail, hoping (though we are only on day 47 of waiting) that our LOA will come in.  Well, it did come in, arrived at the agency today!!  It was mailed from Shanghai on Friday.  It is a very fancy, stamped document on Good Paper.  So there it is, one huge milestone closer.  Maybe, just maybe, we can hope for September travel...Perhaps we could even get our travel invitation in late August!  It would be so great to travel before Lili's 10th birthday on September 4th.

so many schools, so few english language learners...

Over the next two weeks I have my school meetings.  In typical ISTJ fashion, I have researched every detail about every school (public, private, charter, you name it) on the north shore of Boston.  As is turns out (and is by no means a surprise), there are not many English Language Learners in my neck of the woods.  However, I have come to understand that there are some very helpful and caring people that have some experience in this area.  Of course, I would LOVE to send her to a bilingual school with a high Asian child population.  This would require relocation....So, next week I meet with the principal and ESL person (the town has one after all, yeah! I would never have guessed it.) of the local elementary school.  This week I meet with a Waldorf School (near my workplace), interesting because of a focus on thematic learning, strong artistic orientation, and for keeping one teacher through primary school.  Also, this school has offered to teach her English while the other kids learn German (only private school to offer this type of thing so far).  I will also meet with a Montessori school this week; this school's campus is attached to the campus of the college where I work.  So, nice location and mixed grades make this Montessori interesting.   We'll see...