PSLE Stress!!

Dear All

Tiffany just had her SA1 chinese and english orals today. Despite our preparations and cramping of all possible scenarios for her chinese orals, we did not prepare for the picture on a school carnival! As the orals were done flip-flop (half of them do the english first and then chinese and vice versa for the 2nd half), those who did the 1st chinese orals was on the MRT train. This was covered by their school teachers. But carnival wasn't covered at all. Just imagine being tested on materials you had never touched before. Tiff told me none of her classmates knew how to say carnival in chinese!! (Just checked it up -- it's called kuang(2nd tone)huan(1st)jie(2nd). The picture also showed a stall selling popcorn which she doesn't know how to say in chinese either --it's called bao(4th)yu(4)mi(3)hua(1). She felt so deflated and demoralised! She then did her best but I guess she must have been shakened---she kept mixing sell and buy words up (the intonations are different) and stalls with shops (tan wei and dian wei).

At first, I wanted to email a comment to her school that moderation is needed. Then I checked that she doesn't have any SA2 this year but instead the prelims and then the PSLE, so I decided not to shoot off that email. I guess there are alot of things that no matter how hard we prepare for, are out of our control. We just need to pray that she'll have better luck in drawing the better straw at the main exams.

In order to give her some relief, she did very little revision today. She went for cathecism class with Felicia, then we went for a fun swim. Afterwhich, we had swensens at Changi Airport T2. The airport was streaming with people! Earls swensens at T3 (which Felicia calls the Fake Swensens) had a queue. So we went to T2 (the Real Swensens) and guess what? The queue was even longer. Felicia cried when we didn't want to queue and walked off, so in order not to disappoint both girls, Albert joined the queue while the 2 girls played at the water fountain. It was a yummy dinner. We spent 1h plus walking from T3 to T2 and finally got into the restaurant about 9pm. We left at 10:20pm and the queue was just as long!!! BTW, its now a 24h restaurant. Business sure is good.

The girls are too bushed to hit the books, so we'll give them a break for today. The girls compo exams start next Tues and the main exams in 2 weeks time. I feel they are both not yet sufficiently prepared, but Tiffany seems to be so busy, I just can't stress her further and yet we hardly covered much materials together. I ask if you all could help me pray for Tiffany's PSLE this year. We need a lot of prayers.

Love Theresa