Another change in our family...

It's been quite a year of change for our family. Daniel leaving home in January to join the Doulos. Selling our house in the UK, and buying in Cyprus. Tim having his 18th birthday, and Daniel his 20th.

But as far as I'm concerned, this weekend has also been a big turning point. My main role has been home educator for the past nine years, and although in the past year or two the role has been diminished, mainly that of co-ordinator and organiser of resources, it didn't stop. But finally, on Friday, Tim did the very last of his NCSC tests, and I packaged up the final documents and course completion form for my mother to post when she returned to the UK. It's rather dragged out... all Tim had left to complete in June was a few DVD 'lab tests' and some so-called 'literature' work - not that the required books were of great literary standard - where he had to read and answer a lot of comprehension questions. Simple for someone who reads as much as Tim, perhaps, but he found some of the books annoying and it got put off.

But finally he finished. And today, as he described in this post, he received - at last - the full modules and other paperwork for the first semester of his degree course with the Open Theological College. Other than paying for it and ordering a few text books, I won't have any responsibility at all for this. Tim will study on his own, for 6-8 hours a day, and communicate via email with a tutor who will mark his assignments. There are even some online seminars and discussion groups. We'll probably discuss things a bit, since we tend to discuss quite a lot as a family, but Tim is now a university student, albeit by long distance (and he STILL hasn't received his student ID!) Even though I suppose he is still technically home educated.

Just to make life more complicated, we're going away for three weeks on Saturday, to visit Daniel in Singapore. So Tim's had to figure out where he can get wireless networking access (preferably free) while we're there, as he should theoretically have started his degree course four weeks ago, and is thus somewhat behind schedule. Since this applies to several other students too, they've extended the assignment deadline, but he can't really take three weeks off after only one week of serious studying!