Days 2-whatever this is

Well I'm starting to see a pattern in my trips out here. I started out with a refreshingly familiar reunion without mixed emotion, just happiness. That's kind of hard to come by, right? Then we play and have fun, then I decide to bring out the new stuff. Then the new stuff doesn't work. Then I get frustrated and spend every waking minute either trying different things or thinking about what might work. During this time, I'm also passing through culture shock and jet lag a little bit easier than the last time. Also I am neglecting some serious deadline from back home (once it was coursework, last time it was studying for the GRE, this time it was writing curriculum for my new job). Then I get it to work at the last minute, but without enough time to teach much about how it works or think about process, continuity, staff adaptation. And there's that feeling of having sort of just licked the issue (not in the sense we say usually, but in the sense that I didn't take a large bite). So I was thinking the project has been a series of progressively lessening failures in the sense that lots of inspirational quotes use the word as a stepping stone.

Today was kind of the end of the frustration related to this trip. I've been trying to get a couple things on the computer to work together and it's been pretty stressful. I've started using the tablet with cross scanner and the voice and I was having the same problem that the ancutza voice had a couple years ago, which was that the voice would cut out after about 10 minutes of use, because of some sort of sound conflict with other applications or inefficient driver utilization or memory inefficiency. I mean that's my guess. Really all I knew was that it stopped making sound after a little bit and I'd have to reopen the application. This is the voice we use.

I finally got the romanian on screen keyboard with predictive text to work. But that kind of messed up what was going on with the voice. Then I realized that it wasn't that at all. I think there were just some driver issues with the old version of the voice. So I bought the new version and everything started working. It seems pretty simple on paper, but I was stressing out troubleshooting this thing. Especially since every time somebody wanted to see what was going on, I felt like a nerd to say oh um hold on- let me get this going and restart the- crap, can you just- it's not quite up to speed yet. And then dodging their incredulous looks haha.

Anyway today was a contrast of those things. In the morning I got to take Marian to the store. The worker just asked me to go buy some soda with him for her. I know it was just so she could take a break from him, because I've been a childcare worker now and I know that when the volunteers show up, you make them do intern stuff so you can catch a breath of sanity. But it was super fun. He's at that stage where he's asking a million questions and he's super gregarious so it was fun to just walk down the street with the little guy and make it an adventure. I didn't know if the berries on the tree (which happened to be friggin cherries - I'm not a botanist, lay off me) were poisonous so I had to like catch him from stuffing them in his mouth. We got to go twice, because I bought the wrong sized bottle the first time. Good enough.

After this I immediately went inside with Teo to go get Alex. I was trying to show Teo that I got stuff to work, but at that point I didn't and I spent a lot of the time trying to figure that out. But what happened was awesome. He can use camera mouse with the built in webcam to play Aliens on this thing and so I let him do that, but Marian wanted to play too, so we got them to take turns. It was really fun and between turns, Marian and I play fought. It was a diversion from the problem, but it worked for now. The battery died around 12:15 when the kids usually eat, which made it easier to leave this time.

I went to the girls' apartment to use the wifi and charge the tablet (because I forgot my converter). One of the girls talked about Florin and said he might be at the hospital so I dropped everything and walked up with them. We found out he wasn't there so I walked back and went back to the computer. I bought the voice and that was it. Problem solved. I ended up testing it for like a half hour and then got distracted going through old records of the kids.

Ok it's late I'll make edits later.
went back
Played with Alex and Daniel together.
Crocodil

Day 1

So today was a holiday called children's day and I came and surprised Alex. He was super happy and so was I. It was immediately like I hadn't left. The kids did a program that was super cute and my little girl Larisa sang the whole time. She was is a kid I spent a lot of time with in the hospital the first time I was here and I have known her since she was 4. She will be transferred out of the orphanage sometime in the next couple months to a place for older children. I watched her like I imagine a proud parent does. She looks healthy and happy.

I brought the tablet out and started using it with Alex, but there were some problems that took some time to fix and I'm on a pretty nasty sleeping schedule right now, so I couldn't stay as long as I wanted to. Also I need to make some boards that might take awhile. I explained that this computer was different and was for speaking only. It is a computer he can use to speak in the room and outside and anywhere. I think he understood. I'm going to try to take pictures of the staff and other objects in the room. Figure out some of his needs.

I'm thinking maybe of getting a bell like on breaking bad haha. If it's good enough for a former drug lord, it's good enough for the boy. Maybe have him use headphones for practicing math during the day and use the bell to have the workers change it to the speakers. Or use it for other things like low tech eye gaze step scanning.

He's in a room full of 2 year olds. 2 year olds like to grab stuff and stick it in their mouths. This might not work as well as I thought. Wish I would have been able to find some kind of otterbox for this thing.

So since I started writing this, I've broken the boardmaker installation by doing an update (an easy fix, I just happened to leave the cd at the girls' apartment) and realized I may need some help with fabricating some electronic stuff. This is the idea I guess. It's something I can use to activate/deactivate the cross scanner software. Not necessarily a necessity right now, but something that will make things better in the future. Until then I'm going to need a cheap usb keyboard and I think I know where to go for that here. 

Sleeping pattern is pretty screwed up. Have I written that in this post already?

I was just thinking about the first time I came back and had Andrew with me. And Holly. I over complicated things and got bogged down in academic theory. Andrew was able to make things happen much easier, because he concentrated more on people and the human aspect of the project. It lightened things up and balanced much of my frantic fumbling for answers to problems. I've kind of instantly also realized how I could have prepared for this trip better had I known what I'm trying to do now. It's gonna work, I just wish I had a better grip on hacking small electronics.

Update: I also just found a decent Romanian on screen keyboard with predictive text. Which is something I've been trying to figure out how to do within boardmaker for awhile.

http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/lpacks.htm#LP-Romanian