Goodness knows where this past month or so has gone! Just wanted to post to let you know I'm still around, really. It's all been a whirl of school starting and all that entails.
Rhiannon returned to school at the end of August; early compared to UK schools and late compared to the German system.
She has started secondary school - or middle school as it's called in this system. It's a bridge between Primary and High School, according to the parent information. She's a year ahead of the UK system, so in English terms she's in Year 7 where by age, she should be in Year 6. Confused? Me too! She is in a class with older kids and is dealing with it with her usual aplomb.
During the first weeks of September my Facebook timeline was full of photographs of my friends' children all togged up in their fresh new school uniforms. And very gorgeous they looked too.
However, it was wonderful for us not to have to spend the latter part of the summer holidays searching for elusive and expensive items of school uniform. I always thought I was pro-uniform, but it turns out I'm not. It makes life so much easier for us - she can wear whatever she wants.
I do have a photo of her on her first day back, but it's not good quality so I won't display it here. Her outfit for the first day back was considered carefully, even though it didn't look it! Purple t-shirt, black kilt worn over leggings and neon pink and black over the knee socks with skulls on. 'Pixie boots' and a pork-pie hat completed the ensemble. The hat has a great badge on it stating "I follow my own dress code". Excellent!
There are no dress rules at all. Well, not many... it turns out they don't like black lipstick and eyeliner on Grade 6's... applied AFTER she left the house, I should add - I had no idea.
Anyway, her school day starts and ends a little later, yay! It also entails having a different teacher for each subject and moving around to various classrooms. It's taken a few weeks to settle into the system and quite a while for her to find her way around. It's a large campus and she gets lost. She's obviously inherited my non-existent sense of direction.
All seems to be going very well indeed.
In other news: I've been working very hard on my new website - Your Expat Child. If you're so inclined, I'd be very grateful if you could join my new page on Facebook.
I'm also attempting to get a little further with my graphic design course. Both of these projects are taking priority right now, hence the lack of updates here.
Must try harder!