First Day of School

Yesterday was a milestone in the life of the kids! Their first day in a French School!

For Mark, it was his first time at school. Of course, yesterday happened to be the coldest day (-3 Celsius) under an amazing blue sky. I did not want him to be late as I wanted an appropriate time for us to talk to the teachers. Unfortunately, we arrived too early (15 min), and we were all cold waiting in front of the door.

Here came 8:20 am, and the school doors opened. Luba was more scared than Mark. She entered the classroom and stayed with him for 10 min before exiting. The two teachers were ready for him. They downloaded Google Translate on their phone and were ready to use the Translate-to-speech recognition feature. His picture was already on the wall beside all the other children

We left the school, and Luba was worried. So we agreed with the teachers that, if by 10 am, he is not feeling good, they would send us an SMS for us to pick him up at 10 am instead of 11.50.

The teachers sent us an SMS at 9.30 with the following picture,

To our surprise. Mark was peacefully drawing. You should have seen Luba’s face, a mix of relief, happiness, and surprise.

There was no SMS at 10 am, so we went back to school at 11.50 am with all the other parents. We were in line to pick up Mark when the teacher told us that he was sleeping.

So, we found out that he cried from 9.30 to 9.50 and then fell asleep in the teacher’s arms. As there is a dedicated room full of little beds for napping, he was quietly sleeping there. Luba nicely woke him up and exited the classroom – Mark had just successfully attended his first day of Kindergarten,

For Dasha, it was also her back to school to 7th grade. She was also pretty apprehensive. We dropped her off at 9 am at the principal’s office, and here she went. One advantage for her is that her middle school already has three other Ukrainian teenagers (two boys and one girl), so, at least, she will not feel alone.

Around 10 am, she texted her mom, saying that the school was cool and she liked it!

We were ready to party and celebrate this successful first day of school!