The First Day of School

I'm linking up with Flashback Friday today...visit Mylestones to read more posts on this week's theme-school days.

On the last day of August in 2003 we touched down at Heathrow Airport.

Our new home. (England, not Heathrow).

Daughter1 was 15 and entering grade 10. Daughter 2 would be turning 13 in less than two weeks and was entering grade 8. We collected our luggage and located our driver who deposited us in the driveway of our new home.

A home our children had never seen in a country they had never set foot in before that day.

Our relocation agent was supposed to meet us at the house but there was a mix up and another agent had grabbed our keys by mistake so he was delayed.

We didn’t know this. We had no phone.

So we stood in the driveway and wobbled. Husband recognized his three girls were teetering on the brink of something that would not be pretty so we checked into the local hotel.

The girls promptly fell asleep and dreamed that their parents had not taken them an ocean away from everything cherished and familiar.

We woke up the next day in what felt to us like the middle of the night.

Everyone had a stomach full of dancing kangaroos.

We were tired yet wired.

We were headed to our first day of school.

We passed thru the gates and my children had their first glimpse of the International School from which they would both later graduate.

We didn’t know that then.

We’re only here for 3 years. Tops.

Right.

Kangaroos are doing the polka now.

The school is housed in a former manor house and it is beautiful. We step into the lobby and are greeted by the very nice receptionist. Almost immediately someone arrives to whisk daughter1 away. She needs to take ‘just a little French assessment’ before they can give her a schedule.

Mom is reassuring.

assessment =20 minutes max, right?

The examiner said she'd be back in two hours.

Kangaroos are doing the can can now.

Daughter1 shoots mom the evil eye.

Meanwhile, back in the red room...

Yes. There is a red room.

It is indeed red. And gorgeous.

I want to go to school here.

Or at least have coffee in the red room.

Oh, I will have coffee in the red room.

Hundreds of coffees over the span of the next five years.

We are escorted over to the middle school wing. Daughter2 is led away to find her locker, a classroom and fifty new best friends. The secretary inquires of mom and dad as to whether or not daughter2 will be going pony trekking because if she is pony trekking we need to pay. Today.

Pony trekking?

That sounds like riding ponies.

Daughter2 hasn’t done that unless you count the occasional birthday party.

No, this is pony trekking.

As in riding horses in the Black Mountains.

In Wales.

With the rest of the 8^th grade.

Oh, well, yes, if the whole 8^th grade is going yes of course.

Right. You’ll need to pay.

We have no bank account.

Can we pay in US dollars?

35 phone calls later the conversion rate has been calculated.

Okay, she's good to go. Next week.

For three days.

She’ll need a sleeping bag.

No problem-we have four.

They are in our shipment.

Which is still at sea.

Note to self-buy sleeping bag.

First learn to drive.

Then locate the nearest Target.

That would be America.

That’s a problem.

Mom and Dad leave the middle school office in a stupor.

What have we done?

Where is Wales?

Is that England?

Is a three day pony trekking trip dangerous?

The Black Mountains sound ominous.

Mom returns to office…idiotically inquires as to whether there are chaperones.

Oh yes. The teachers.

Alrighty then.

Meet daughter1 in highschool office.

!!! Mom!!!

!!!I had to write an essay!!!

!!!In French!!!

Daughter1 throws daggers with her eyes.

Mom can see the daggers behind the tears that are threatening.

Principal appears. Principal is nice. Oh so very very nice.

A warm smile. A gift. Principal is also new but has mostly lost the dazed look common to the newly arrived. He hasn’t lost his sense of compassion.

He never does.

He calls to a girl in the hall.

She’s an Aussie.

Show daughter1 around please.

Sure. She smiles.

Aussies are happy.

I think it’s the weather.

Daughter1 is led off to the lockers and to meet her classmates.

From no less than 40 countries.

And to wonder what in the world has happened to her life???

We wrap up the paperwork and the tour and the organizing.

Daughter2 knows she is going to love it.

I’m going pony trekking!

With 50 of my new best friends!

Yay!

Daughter1 puts on her brave face.

And cries herself to sleep.

More than once.

And misses her big American highschool.

And the place she called home.

New friends call.

Shopping in London? Yes please.

Time passes. Tears stop. Smiles grow big.

Home is here.

Living in a foreign country is educational in every sense of the word.

We spent an enormous chunk of time in this school building.

A safe place. Friendly faces. A home away from home.

An entire world was opened up to us in this school.

Friendships were born.

For mom and dad too.

Trips were taken.

Art in Berlin and Barcelona.

Spanish in Spain.

French in France.

Theatre in the Czech Republic.

Senior trips to Turkey and Cyprus.

Sporting events in Paris, Cairo, Antwerp, The Hague, Munich and Frankfurt.

Music performances, plays, ceremonies.

Graduations.

People moved in and people moved out.

Every. single. year.

A place to learn not only maths and history.

But also life.

Among people who look and speak and dress and think differently than we do.

Among people who laugh and cry, work and play, study and travel.

Among people who love their families and their pets and their home countries.

People like us.

Your children thank you.

For shaking up their world.

You cannot live in an international community and not be changed by it. Some days are hard. Some days are more than a little bit frustrating. Some days are completely amazing.

Some days you cannot believe how your world spun differently forever after that first day of school.