Back to school

Yesterday was the first day of school for the kids. This much-awaited day had everybody on edge a little bit but the kids were troopers and came out of school with smiles on their faces. Even better, they went off to school today without a complaint.

In general, over the last few weeks, Paige had been looking forward to school and Clay had been a little hesitant. For him, that's standard operating procedure for the beginning of a school year -- as Oma, Papa, and Meme can all attest. (Preschool involved literally dragging him out of the car to the school.)

For Paige, she was looking forward to making friends. After three or four weeks with just her little brother, you can imagine how great it sounds to her to hang out with girls her own age. One of my favorite little moments from our Alps trip was on the Sound of Music tour bus when Paige was peaking around Erin with a big smile on her face as she was trying to catch the eye of a 10 year old girl from Germany that was sitting with her mother in the row behind us. I loved seeing my once-shy little girl reaching out like that. Later on the tour the two girls sat together and did their best job at a conversation. Erin exchanged email addresses with the mother so perhaps they will stay in touch and visit in Germany sometime.

Earlier this week we met with the headmistress of the immersion program at our school as she assessed both kids and then met with Erin and I. That went really well. Both Paige and Clay come into their grades with a strong set of skills so are set up really well. Clay was placed in a class with a combination of first graders and second graders. Likewise, Paige was placed in one with a combination of fourth and fifth graders. Each class has about fifteen kids from ten or so nationalities. (The headmistress said the immersion program as a whole has 65 kids with over forty different nationalities!)

The only problem with the meeting was that she told the kids that their teachers would only speak French in class. This understandably caused some concern with them and we had multiple conversations about the fact that all of the kids would be in the same boat.

We had a warm welcome at school yesterday and Clay greeted his teacher with "Bonjour. Comment vous appelez vous Clay" -- his attempt to introduce himself that resulted in "Hello. What is your name Clay". :) With hugs and kisses we were off and they got started with school.

Picking them up a few hours later they were both happy and shared the details of their days, which is normally hard to coax out of them. They both spent time in class learning about the nationalities of their classmates and getting introduced. They also both made friends. Paige has a new friend, Anna Sophia, from Mexico. Clay has a friend that he believes is from Egypt and whose name starts with "L" and ends with "Y" (but isn't Larry! -- "No Dad!").