Starting school, Argentine style

This is the official Argentine public school uniform, called a guardapolvo (dust-guarder). And for the first time in our family's history, one of ou children has to wear it. Andrés began school yesterday in a local public school. This pic was taken after his second day, and you can see how smily he is. It wasn's that way after the first day...hopefully it will be a better experience as the days go by.
Andrés is going to public school for several reasons, the first and most important is that he is considered Argentine by the government and homeschooling is not an option in their minds. So since he has to be enrolled in some school, and we found one three blocks away from our home we decided to give it a try. The main reason we even considered enrolling him is that he is so social, and he has no friends, not at his old school, not in church, and no other option to make them at this point. Being in a public school will also force him to learn Spanish.
At first he was not thrilled with the idea of learning Spanish, but when I told him that he will make friends, have many boys in his class, and they won't move away every year (as the international kids did at his old school), then he liked the idea.
Yesterday he came home upset, that the kids were crowding around him and wouldn't leave him alone, that they were calling him names (how does he know?) and some girls were chasing him. So he was overwhelmed and said, "Well, we gave that a try!" and determined that he wasn't going back today. But today was another story.
In his newly bought clothes, including the uniform, with his backpack full of his new notebooks and candy to share with all his classmates, he went to school with a better attitude. And came out with a smile on his face. The candy worked, apparently, but there wasn't enough to share so he had to share the rest of his snack (granola bars) and he was HUNGRY!! His sisters had prepared a snack for him when he got home, and he was treated like a king.
Next week we start homeschooling with the girls, even though the materials haven't arrived yet. Andrés will have some English work to do as well, and we'll have the mornings to do it. I'm looking forward to getting back into a routine, and hopefully a month from now our lives will return to some normalcy.