Friday, September 23, 2011

SAT update

I mentioned in the previous post that I was emailing the SAT folks to find out how to do training when it's only offered in the middle of the night. I sent one set of emails in reply to a master email chain (one of those generic "Testers@whatever" emails) and then realized that earlier I'd heard from a human being, so I maybe should write them back because it could be quicker.

This morning, I received two emails with a training presentation attachment. The two emails read:

1. "I have emailed the presentation to you an [sic] closed your center as having completed the training. Thank you!"

2. " Please review the presentation. You are not considered as having completed the training. Thank you!"

I AM SCHROEDINGER'S QUANTUM SAT PROCTOR!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Things We Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging

We have neglected the blog for a while. This puts the blog in excellent company, along with such elements of life as sleep, nutrition, and personal hygiene (I've been meaning to repaint my toenails for about three weeks now). The laundry is unfolded. The G12 research papers are ungraded. So what on earth has gotten done around here in approximately the last week?

We spent

2 - Days in Nagasaki, in which we visited
4 - Museums, including the Atomic Bomb Museum, the former Dutch settlement at Dejima Island, the small and random Siebold Museum, and the Nagasaki History and Culture Museum, at which
1 - Museum t-shirt was purchased, size Medium (slightly too big, which is bizarre in Japan) as well as
4 - books for the FIS library on Japanese history, which of course required filling out
1 - reimbursement request form stapled to
3 - receipts

Speaking of travel:

60,000 - yen, from the wonderful PTA, allocated into scholarships for the SEOMUN Model United Nations conference, disbursed to
2 - deserving applicants on the basis of essays read by a parent and yours truly, on the basis of
2 - letters to parents and application forms written by yours truly, followed by
1 - letter about payment and passport deadlines, written by yours truly, supplemented by
11 - airplane seats booked to Seoul, but not this time by me.

What else?
1 - College reference request form for students designed, cleared with fellow faculty, and disseminated
3 - emails sent to College Board to find out how I can train as an SAT proctor when training takes place at 3 AM Japan Time
0 - answers from College Board
14 - Japanese university English-language programs catalogued into a heiny-kicking spreadsheet with course descriptions and application deadlines
4 (more?) - emails to students and parents advancing the college application process for their children

And let's not forget:
3 - meetings with individual students to sort out applications
5 - faculty meetings about internal school policy to schedule a meeting with
11/12 - grade parents next Tuesday after
55 - minutes of elementary school martial arts, which I help coach from 3:35-4:30, but I can't attend on Thursdays, because of
75 - minutes of Japanese class, which meets after
20 - minutes of subway ride downtown

Finally
4 - sanity-saving romance novels desperately read while in epic denial of my upcoming to-do lists
2 - happy birthday phone calls to official Blog Moms, who were courteous enough to be born on the same day and keep things easy for me and Justin
1 - hat blown off upriver in today's typhoon

Which was really just insulting.