A good, busy day

Yesterday was a banner day for us. In the morning I went to the county building and met with the psychologist that observed T at school. She does not work for the school but is directly from the ministry of education and what we talked about was confidential. K went along to help with translating. I was curious how she did when talking with T since she didn't speak much English, but I was very impressed when she showed us her methods. One of them involved lining up toy animals from the one he liked the most to the one he liked the least to make a scale. Then she asked him where (which animal) different things (about school and living here and so on) rated on that scale as a way for him to communicate indirectly but relatively unambiguously. I have realized that this blog is starting to get some wider attention about this school issue (which is good), but I don't want to put anything too specific here that might get back to the people directly involved, so for now let me say that it was a very good meeting and we came to an understanding about what we felt the best course of action was, which reflects the course of action V and I wanted in the first place. It also turns out that the school can't block a transfer, contrary to what we have been told before (who knows what the law really is). I will continue to update our progress here and I can give more specific details off blog to people that know me personally. I am very hopeful that things can work out for T now regarding school. The next big event is hearing back about the alternative schools decision today after they meet.

(I forgot to mention, we were able to get a doctors note on Monday to legally keep T out of school, based on his weight loss recently; he has been throwing up regularly at school now from anxiety and his weight loss is becoming serious, but he is gaining weight again outside of school.)

Also, V's laptop from the US arrived in Kiel last week and we needed to pick it up or they would start charging us for storage. So I ran to Kiel in the afternoon and checked at the auto club first to see if they had my driver license translation ready yet; they had just finished it. So I picked that up and went by the post office. Here I had to open the package and lay everything out in front of them to prove what was in it and that we owned it personally (it felt kind of like going through an airport in the US). There were also a couple pages of forms to fill out so it took some time, but finally I was back to the train station with V's laptop. When I arrived back home it turned out our absentee ballots had arrived for this November's elections!, so I am filling those out now.