Smart enough.... but not smart enough?

A conversation earlier today that centered around some of Jr.'s classmates who have signed up for one week courses at Stanford and Berkeley for summer. Yes! You read that right.

Ten year olds attending special "educamps" in everything from Java program skills to Creative Photo editing and publishing... at a cost of ~ 1000 bucks for a Mon-Fri class which is 9AM-3PM.

My first thought was "How can I teach a class like that and retire soon?"

Anyways, we were talking about the correlation between the kids grades in school today to see if they are super smart.

Jr.: I don't know as we are not allowed to look at other kids report cards.

Me : when I was little the whole class knew what everyone got. The teachers would read out our scores before handing out our test papers!

Jr.: Well, it is different now and I did get many "O's" this year! (O is for Outstanding)

Me : (looking at little one) Did you get any O's?

LO : Appa, (yells) HOW CAN I GET O'S IF I GOT A MINUS FOR "LISTENING AND FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS" ?! YOU TELL ME.

Me : !!!!!????

Seriously, how can I tell her anything after a rhetorical question like that? You tell me!

A new home record..

The kids almost always beat me at a game of Ticket to ride. It has replaced sequence as the new popular game, thanks to the MIL who introduced it to us.

Today, Daddy answered back with a new home record score of 140 points by connecting three sides of the board... Yes! I went from Los Angeles to Miami via Vancouver and Montreal..

Just on a side note, Jr. made a 130 once and the little one made 135 once and they play like pro's.

Now that Daddy is on the same footing with the girls, the games are going to be interesting!

Happy New Year 2013

Yes.. it is the New year for south Indians and we had the usual good eats and spent quality time with family. 

We want to wish everyone a wonderful Tamil New Year, Ugadi, Vishu and anything else the New Year goes by in different parts of India.

This year is named "vijaya" for Victory. Hope truth and righteousness emerge victorious this year!

Here's to 2013 from the Traveling Naryanans.

Learned earlier this year that folks in the west used to celebrate their New Year around April 1st as well a long time ago.. then they changed it to Jan 1st. In order to discredit some folks who refused to change the New Year from first week of April to January, they called April 1st "April Fools day".. don't know if this is true, but thought of sharing this interesting tid bit. 

Apparently the atheist government in Tamil Nadu tried to move the New Years day to coincide with the Harvest Festival and that is being ignored for now. We live in a funny world with all these changes, daylight savings time etc.. Don't know how things will change in another 30 years. 

Hoping it is for the better! Happy 2013!