Back to school

Well, that was an incredibly short five weeks.

In getting the kids ready for their first day back to school this morning, we had a little trouble last night. I was sure I had all of the kids old classroom slippers (the special shoes that they have wear only inside the school) left from June, and since we'll be leaving in a few months, I saw no need to replace them for the new year.  But when I went to dig them out for the kids' backpacks, Ella's slippers were nowhere to be found.

Buying new shoes at 5:00 on a Sunday is much more difficult than it should be: Dennis went to the Hauptbahnhof, the only place in Zürich with open stores on a Sunday, to see what he could find. Unfortunately, most of the shoes Ella's size had pictures of kittens or horses on them, and Ella's decided she's sophisticated, now, so those just wouldn't do. After combing every shop in the train station, he found a pair of blue clogs that passed the 8-year-old coolness inspection.

I realized I had no idea which day of the week Ella would have swimming or gym, so I made her take outfits for both, just in case. I felt uncomfortably close to winging it for what was sort of an important day for my little girl, but Ella seemed confident and excited this morning, wearing an outfit that she clearly chose quite carefully. Dennis walked Ella in this morning, although he said she waved him away when they got to the front door: she happily ran off to join her friends.

Poor Alex, though, was feeling a little shaky and seemed close to tears all morning.  He's a homebody, and with a new teacher this year, he just wasn't sure what to expect.

So Joey and I walked little Alex in.  We were the first ones to the school yard, and the first ones inside. I adored his teacher, Frau Ziegler, on sight: she's young, with a warm smile, and she seems really eager to do well by these kids. I explained to her that Alex (who was kind of hiding behind me) was a little nervous, and she admitted that she was as well.  She knelt down to Alex, trying to assess how much German he speaks.  "Alex, verstehst du mich ein bisschen?"  Do you understand me a little bit?


I don't know if Alex understood her at all, but he's gotten very good at judging when he's supposed to nod or smile when people speak to him, and he gave her a solemn little nod before shaking her hand.


The teacher had shifted things around in the room a bit, adding an enormous basket of wooden trains: Alex ran directly to these, and he reported that he played with them for most of the day.  I suspect he'll spend most of the rest of his year there as well, lucky kid.

Joey meets Alex's new teacher

Frau Ziegler had brought with her a vase of roses, and each child was to give one to his mother before sending her out the door: a gentle way to help the kid say goodbye, and also a vehicle to usher away over-anxious parents. I went into the classroom to get my flower, and she invited an awed Joey into the room as well. "I get go inside too?" he asked, disbelieving: he never would have gotten to do that last year, with our rather strict Frau Simmen. Things are looking up.


When the kids came home from school, Ella was bubbly.  She reported that she'd had gym that morning, and then, since her German tutor wasn't there today, she got to draw a picture while the rest of the class did their English lesson. As she told her brother, "They sang a very important and influential song called 'Old McDonald.'" The child has inherited her father's snark. When I asked her what special class she'd have tomorrow, she told me they had handicrafts on Tuesdays.  "Oh, but you love Handarbeit!" I said, but I guess I mispronounced it.  Ella giggled at me.  "Mom, 'Hundarbeit' is 'dog work.' I'm afraid we don't have any dogs in school."

The trickiest part of the day was getting Alex to go back to school after lunch.  Last school year, he only had class in the morning, but now that he's a second-year Kindergartener, he has class on Monday and Thursday afternoons as well.  And he was not pleased: he was cozy and drowsy from his lunch and had no interest in going back into the fray.

Since the thermometer is still over 90 degrees, Alex's teacher asked that we send the kids back in the afternoon in their bathing suits.  Alex looked dubious when I pulled his out, and I eventually had to walk him back to school again, he was so doubtful that he was really supposed to wear his trunks to class. As we walked, Alex practiced saying "Spiel mit mich" over and over, anxious to get it right so that he could ask his favorite friend to play with him in the afternoon. But when he came back from school again at 3:30, he was just glowing: they'd gotten to play in a pool "that was as big as daddy is tall" and they got to run through a sprinkler "that was one mommy high." Yay! School is fun!

And Joey and I, we went to the grocery store for the first time in ages. Dennis has mercifully been making little stops after work all summer long, sparing me from taking all three kids shopping.  But it was kind of nice to go out with my little shopping buddy again.

Ella had no homework, happily.  And I didn't, either. I always brace myself for filling out a dozen lengthy forms when the kids go back to school in America. But tonight I had to sign my name just once for Ella, confirming that I'd received the semester calendar, and once for Alex, giving permission for him to have fluoride treatments in school.

So, since Alex was already dressed for it, and since it was still ridiculously hot, I took the kids straight to the pool after school. All three kids had a fantastic time: we all spent most of the afternoon on the waterslide.  Joey's face is almost split with his smile: he likes to go down holding onto my ankles, so that he's almost, but not quite, riding it by himself.  And since kids are allowed to go down in groups of twos, Ella and Alex like to fly down together. They always go first, and I can hear them squealing all the way down.

We ate our dinner at the pool restaurant: it's not great food, but we did find out that they had ham sandwiches for Alex, who doesn't really like processed food.  Ella happily cried out "Yeah! Junk food!" when I told her our meal plans, and she and Joey devoured their hot dogs.


While we ate, we watched the big, brave, somewhat scary teenagers on the diving board.  I don't know if it's because he was feeling emboldened from his swimming yesterday, but Alex got it in his head that he really wanted to go off the board, too.  I wasn't quite ready for him to do that--I wasn't sure he knew how to kick his way to the surface--but I give him props for bravery.  And just them some of his classmates appeared at the pool, so it wasn't too hard to dissuade him.

Needless to say, I had some very sleepy kids come bedtime.