First Days of School...Whew!

Last Friday was the first day of school for elementary kids. Today was the first day for middle and high school kids. Can we saying learning experience?

The first few days for Jolie and Eva were OK, a little bumpy, but OK. We have met with Jolie's teacher and he seems to really want to tackle her language issue. His name is Paco and the kids call the teachers by their first names. Jolie is checking out when he talks to the class. We are trying to encourage her to pay close attention and see how many words or phrases she can understand.

Eva has a teacher named Amparo. She seems to be particular. She sent out the supply list that had us running to 13 different stores (no exaggeration) to find things, and we STILL didn't have it all! This was an exercise in vocabulary, frustration and learning more about Spanish culture. I'm exhausted.

There is definitely a line between teachers and parents. Parents can't just walk into the school and the PTA (called the AMPA) has only certain activity times. Parents stand outside the gate with their kids until a teacher comes to open the gate and then ONLY the kids are allowed in. If parents have business at the school they can talk to the secretary from 9-9:45am. That's it. If you miss it, come back the next day at 9am.

At the same time, the teachers and administrators are very professional and serious. The curriculum is a little more rigorous from what I can tell. And it seems they set high expectations. Additionally, Jolie is in third grade here, not second where she should be. They go by calendar year here for birthdays and placing kids in grades by age. In Portland the cut off is Aug. 31.

Because we live in Valencia, there is a language dialect that pertains to this region of Spain, called Valenciano. With multiple copies of redundant paperwork that the school already has multiple copies of, we can opt out of the instruction for this language for up to two years, if that is all we are staying for. We opted out for the first year and will probably have a better idea of if we are staying more than two at the end of the first year.

Kerline just had her first day of school today. She has a plaid pleated skirt, white polo uniform and is going to a semi-private, small, all-girls Catholic school. When we got there this morning I asked the secretary if we could go upstairs with Kerline to her classroom. She said yes, hesitating a bit before answering. When we got to the top of the stairs, there was a teacher there and she greeted us very friendly and basically said she'd take Kerline from there and we could go. Um, OK, uh, bye Kerline! When we picked her up she had a smile and seemed to like it. There is a girl from Miami in her class and she translated a lot of things for her, well, into ENGLISH anyway.

Kerline's conversational English is actually doing pretty well. She understands a lot and says some. She tends to mumble or talk quietly. I think this is partly due to her personality but also because of her lack of confidence in the language.

Kerlinie Weenie Beenie will be turning 15 on Sunday! Santa Vaca! (OK, holy cow is not an expression that is used here, but I like translating English expressions into Spanish because they make no sense). I can't believe I am a mom to a 15 year old. We get a good laugh out of me being 18 when she was born. =) We've got some birthday plans in the works that we'll share later. I'll also post some school pictures later.