El Colegio 2

Finally, two weeks in, my kids get up on time for school. It is funny how our routine and the details have changed, yet the foundation has not. I still have to encourage them to "use their words," look at me so I know they are listening, be each others' advocate instead of their enemy. But otherwise, EVERYTHING else is different. And outside of some frustrations related to their inability to communicate as they can at home, they have navigated flawlessly.

PRE-SCHOOL ROUTINE:
We get up at 8 every morning (!!! I LOVE THIS!!!!) After a breakfast of magdalenas (muffins,) galletas (breakfast cookies,) milk and juice, we leave the house at 8:45. We have a system: Hugo pushes the elevator buttons when we're going up, Atticus when we're going down. It takes forever just to lock the door; God help us if we forget something inside. I have FOUR keys to get from the street into our apartment, for goodness' sake! After a walk down the hall, an elevator ride down five floors, through the entrance hall and through two locked doors, we are on the street. We walk up a few blocks to the tiny callejón at the end of which are the white, wooden doors to the school, surrounded by brick. We do not see a single blade of grass the entire way. Trees are saturated with dog pee, cigarette butts are abundant. They open the white doors five minutes before school begins at 9, and close five minutes after. If you miss this window, you must go back down the street, walk half a block, take a right, walk a block, take another right, then another half block to the right to arrive at the main doors, where they will buzz you in twice. No one is ever late.

At our school there are students from Paraguay, China, Morocco.... With approximately 24 students per class and one class per grade, the school is small. There are four floors and the classrooms are tiny; you can imagine the raucousness as the kids walk down the tiled hallways. The teachers are wonderful, the other students are kind and vivacious. Kids thrive here, they are worshipped. People live for kids; the world revolves around them, quite literally.

SCHOOL PHASE 2:
I pick the boys up at 12:30 and we head home to eat by 1. We return to school from 2:30 until 4:30, when the shops start to open up again, having closed around 2. The boys have the option to stay in the comedor to eat lunch and play with their friends. Because they are required to eat ALL of the food on their plates and because many meals have meat, they choose to come home for now. Food is catered, but it is home-made, by far higher in quality than our lunchroom meals and they eat off of REAL dinnerware. The cost for the two additional hours, including the meal is 6,50 Euros or about $8.50. They have a variety of classes - music, art, science, English, Spanish, religion, gym - as well as many excursions. In March they will go on a three day, two night trip to a farm! Their teachers will accompany them, and the entire trip costs around $139. Most day trips run around $4. We have also had to pay around $100 per child for the "chandals" (sweatsuits) they are required to wear on gym days and excursions, as well as another $100 for books. School, however, is paid by the government. There are grants for students who cannot afford the trips so that all can participate.

At 4:30 they are done for the day! Because they do not have to wake up until 8 (seriously, this is a Godsend!) they go to sleep around 9:30 or 10. This gives us a GIANT five hour chunk of time every day to be together, outside of meal times (and if you want to add the two lunch hours to it, that is almost SEVEN hours!!! It feels so easy and relaxed, and there is a sense of connectivity that I do not feel in the US.

(I haven't figured out how to turn these around.)

School is just as demanding, and they are ahead in many respects. In Hugo's classroom, they are already reading and writing in cursive and adding and subtracting in the hundreds. Atticus says that they have a math system that seems very easy and efficient; he has yet to master it and math is one of his strengths.

Every day, twice a day, they look forward to school and have stories to tell about what they've learned. I hope it continues as such.