The first week of school

The first day of school came with such drama and fanfare, frustration and fatigue that it seemed only fair to consider the week as a whole.  After a twenty minute drive to the school orientation one week before, on the first day, we found ourselves boxed into hellish traffic unable to move as we were on a tiny road with only one lane in each direction.  What we'd prepared to be a forty-five minute drive at max, turned into an hour and fifteen minute stress-builder that included a crying baby, frustrated pre-schooler, near to exploding driver (Didier), and to my embarrassment, a just released from hospital kidney stone survivor forced to pee in a cup in the standstill.  All of this before Lily had stepped one foot on campus that morning.


When we finally arrived at school, some of the kids in Reception (which is basically a pre-school, kindergarten combo) were in their games/PE/gym tshirts and Lily, like many others, was in her full uniform.  Turns out the weekly schedule had been changed without notification to half the class's parents.  Due to some interesting scheduling, half of the class had started school the Wednesday before to prevent mass hysteria amongst the 4 to 5 year old set not used to spending the day away from their parents.  Those parents were told of the schedule change.  The rest of us, not.  As the kids are required to participate in activities with a tshirt, the remaining parents were forced to purchase tshirts with the school crest.   Uh huh.  Those, as one can imagine, cost quite a bit more than a regular tshirt from Woolworth's.


Lily loves big school and her teachers.  Her full time job as a student at Blossoms Nursery School prepared her well for the long hours and her teachers were just as sweet and caring as they could be.  They are enthusiastic about Lily, which makes me happy, and she is excited about learning.  I can ignore the whole uniform thing which I really am not into and tolerate the excessive religious indoctrination.  There's a lot of praying and singing and talking about the Lord.  I was raised in the Christian church and have a healthy relationship with my God, but my little four year old is like "Jesus's love is bubbling over."  OK.

We took a different route the second day and everything changed.  We arrived twenty minutes later, having bypassed any traffic by leaving before anyone else was on the road.  The subsequent days proved that leaving earlier was better.  Just ten minutes difference or falling behind a bus could change the arrival time.  No matter.  We still arrived early every day and had time to let Lily adjust and play and meet other students and Mrs. Lucas, a woman assigned to watch the youngest students when their parents left them on campus to go to work or shuttle their other kiddies to other locales. 

Didier and I have already developed a rhythm for getting lunch and uniform and two girlies off to school before 7 am.  It's all in the night time prep and using that 5:30 am wake up call from either Lily or Virginie(They like to take turns.) to our advantage.  Lily still gets a little TV time and everyone eats, potties, brushes teeth and runs out the door.

Lily practiced her "c's" and "o's" and had wonderful stories to tell.  I was relieved until this morning when tears began streaming down her little face and her big browns implored me to keep her close to me.  She didn't want to stay.  Someone had teased her last week and no amount of coaxing or talking about it could soothe her little heart.  She feared, as she was told by her tiny bully, that we would never return to get her and she would be left all alone.  How I wanted to strangle that tiny little peanut.  He's got an older brother and I have found that this little ones with older siblings do quite a lot of teasing and torturing, probably as it's been done to them.  Lily has no experience with this and at her pre-school the aunties would just scoop her up and love her.  I will have to teach her to battle.  There's one lesson from the first week of school.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.