School Days

So the long awaited day is here...Ellie goes to school. "How will she do?" "She's so flexible." "She won't understand a word they're saying!" Well, the moment of truth is here.

She has been talking about it ever since the second day we got here when Nathalie took us on a tour of the area and showed us the outside of "Ellie's school." We toured the inside last week and she was into everything in the pre-student, pre-teacher, abandoned classroom. So excited!!!

This morning she dons her backpack and off we go. She transitions into the room remarkably well and as I say good bye to her I know I am more sad than she. This is the first time she has not been with me - she comes to work with me and is in the most phenomenal day care at my school. I can visit her whenever I want. So, as I say goodbye she asks me, "Where are you going?" I say, "Home with Baby Cole" and she says, "No, you're going to work." Just like at home. Off we go.

The school hours are different here. She goes in the morning from 9-12 and we pick her up for family lunch and then again from 1:30-4:30. So we pick her at 12:00 and the teacher informs us that she had cried all morning. Such a surprise. It turns out that some others kids were crying and it upset her. At some point she attempted to communicate something to her teacher. Apparently she tried to communicate this for some extended time period without any success and they ended up taking her over to the older school where there is a teacher who speaks English and what Ellie wanted was "a tissue;" Heartbreaking!

Lunch was good and surprisingly she was very willing and even excited to go back. We were told she would nap when they got back (good luck, she hasn't napped since we got to France). So equipped with her "Taggie" she strolled right into the nap room and barely said goodbye to me. The afternoon pick up and report was very positive, as she strutted towards me with "Taggie" in hand. Lucky her that she got to keep it during the waking hours! She must have thought "hey, even though I can't understand ANYTHING anyone is saying, they let me have "Taggie" so we'll call it even."

She came home reporting that she had sang, played with animals, trucks, had water out of a cup and did not cry!

Kids are resilient.