http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: Day 64: School update

Friday, September 7, 2012

Day 64: School update

It's going well!

Nina loves it. How could she not? She's been out every day at 11:15 (school starts at 7:30, so we're talking 3 hours and 45 minutes). On Tuesday and Wednesday they spent, by Nina's account, 2 hours at the playground. I'm guessing it was actually less than that, but I'm sure it was at least 45 minutes. I'm sure because Maggie and I walked by the playground on our way to pick her up, and since we're always early, we passed by it at about 10:55. Perfect though, Maggie got to play with the kids for about 15 minutes!

On Friday, Nina's class has swimming. There's a pool IN the school, but they don't do swimming lessons, it's just free play! Such fun for the kids!

Her teacher says her German is coming along very quickly, which we knew, but that's nice to hear. And she's of course getting along great with her classmates, who all seem to be very sweet kids. So, yay! A success!

Even Maggie had a good week! I dropped her off on Friday and took a walk around the neighborhood. She was happy! Then I came back, they ask parents never to sneak off without letting the kids know they're leaving. It's very different from the US. So I came back inside, but she was happily playing, so I just waited in the lobby and read my book (I've gotten quite a lot of reading done this week!), and maybe 15 minutes later she came running out in a panic looking for me. But she said hi, showed me a flag she made, and went back to playing. She came out a few times after that, but she was fine. We'd gotten there a little later of Friday, so before long the kids were playing outside.

Next week I'll have her go for an hour or two, and work up from there.

So, a funny. I mentioned that Maggie's classmates are an especially diverse bunch, no? There's a Turkish kid, a Romanian, a Serbian, an Albanian, of course Maggie, then the remaining 5 or so are Austrian.

Alright, well Maggie was saying that she doesn't know how to ask the girls if they want to play with her, so I said, "I'm not sure either, let's ask Nina."

And Nina responded, "Here's the thing: if they don't speak German, I can't help you."

Ha ha! What a crack-up!

2 comments:

Vanessa said...

Glad it is all going so well!! Is there some kind of after care for elementary school kids whose parents work during the day? I don't imagine they all have a stay at home parent to go home to, do they?

Desiree said...

Yeah, there's an after school thing. But I think there tends to be more family nearby still too. And I think they're more likely to let the kids go home and be by themselves earlier than we would in America, but I have to find out more to be sure.