First Day of School

Today was the first day of school. It had been much anticipated and many days of dealing to get ready. There was finding the school, visiting, applying, orientation, and something we aren't used to, paying. The kids area going to the Colegio Bennett - a friendly and nice bilingual English-Spanish school, about five minutes away. In many ways the cultural adjustment is mostly an adjustment to private school, which is new to us.  Everyone is both nervous and excited about meeting new kids, getting by in Spanish, and we are all optimistic it will work out well.

 The kids have two uniforms, a formal one and one for days with sports:

If you look in the background of this picture you can see Kara popping out of our garden of our little brick condo.  The kids are out of the house and headed up to the gate.


We signed them up for the bus, as we don't have a car.  But it is a bit expensive as the school is so close by, so we will have to see how it goes:

Here they are about to get into the bus. There is a person who rides in the back of the bus with the kids and a clipboard, and who runs in to ring the buzzer or talk to the doorman while the driver stays in the bus.



We followed to see the kids in their classroom, and to carry the big bag of school supplies that the school has asked that we purchase. They seemed to be doing fine, and we stopped by Oly's class just as he was introducing himself:

It turns out that on the first day they could wear either sports or formal uniform and everyone else had chosen the sports uniform.  Except the other new kid next to Oly who had no uniform.

And as we were leaving there was a huge racket out in the street. It was the seniors all hanging out of their cars and honking horns and throwing streamers, etc,

It was quite cute.