Eiche fam

Day one

We arrived early, but unfortunately they didn’t actually get started until an hour and a half later because the Internet connection was not being cooperative.

We had made some special arrangements for Namine (which were, more or less, an unofficial IEP): she could stay in her wheelchair, and we brought her school desk (which, despite the name, is really just a fold-up table) to make sure she could sit comfortably at the wheelchair’s height. Because of these arrangements, Namine would be in a testing room by herself.

But once there, Namine really wanted to test in the same room as everyone else. As it turned out, there was plenty of space at the front of the room, so she was able to do just that.

When the kids took their lunch break, we went down to the cafeteria. After we had gotten our food, I asked Namine how she felt. She’d been pretty nervous before, but now that she was in the middle of testing, she felt good. “Some of the questions are pretty hard,” she said, but her smile said she wasn’t worried. She was working hard, and that was all that mattered.

Namine was pretty burned out by around 3:00. Testing went until 4, but we weren’t about to force her to keep working. The testing was scheduled for two days, and there was no reason not to come back the following day.

Day two

Since Namine didn’t have a whole lot of testing left, we felt no obligation to arrive early. All the technology issues had been sorted out, so there was no problem for Namine to get started as soon as we arrived. All Namine’s nervousness was eliminated the previous day, so the only excitement she had was the good kind.

When Namine was done with her testing, she came out loudly announcing it. We had to shush her because other kids were still completing their own tests, but it was hard not to be excited for her.