First day of school

First day of school is over, and I’d call it a success because of the outcome, but based on the beginning there were doubts. School starts at 8:30 and we arrived just as the classes were lined up and going to their classrooms. So we didn’t get the girls to their lines before they left the library. We had to catch up with their classes, and that was problematic – Eli was so upset and I don’t blame her. Thinking about it afterwards I should have just waited until everyone left, then gone up to her classroom with her. But I felt rushed to get her with her class that I didn’t think it through carefully.

Emily was basically the same, but at least she knew a girl in her class, so she joined her. For her the difficulty was that the first class was Spanish and she didn’t understand anything. She has such a block, where she gets nervous and doesn’t understand because she freezes up. Eventually she’ll get her confidence back and be comfortable with it, but it might take more time than we thought.

Andrés was a card. He saw his friend whom he met two days ago, joined him in line, didn’t say good bye and had a wonderful day. On the train ride home I asked him what he did at school and he said, “well…I grew a moustache. Do you see it?” Never a dull moment!

We stopped at the school supply store on our way home with the class lists and purchased a ton of stuff! The attendant was very nice, even stacked up the supplies for each child and gave them separate bags. Eli is thrilled, and has spent the last hour playing with hers – like mother, like daughter! She’ll be content to play with them for days to come.

Knowing how stressed out I get easily, I have made a decision to accomplish one major or new thing each day. Today’s task was the school supplies, yesterday was going to the kids’ school. Tomorrow we have an insurance appointment in the morning. High on my list of things to accomplish is finding the supermarket, but rumor has it that it’s a train station ride away from here, not within walking distance. Fortunately all the grocery stores in Buenos Aires deliver, so I don’t have to walk home with bags of groceries. I was hoping to have accomplished this task already, but there hasn’t been time…we’ve been buying in small supplies and surviving.