Tuesday 28th August 2007
Oh yeah! At last, the long summer holidays are over and Rhiannon goes back to school. Now she's in Year 1 and is thrilled to have the fabulous Mr B as her teacher this year. This is the fun-loving guy mentioned in the post about Japanese Day who dressed up as a lady…
All the children adore him as well as all the parents, so we are very happy for Rhiannon. The only sad thing is that this school deliberately separates friends each new school year, so Rhiannon is upset that she won't be with her special friends. This "policy" thinks it's a good idea to split friends up regularly so the children get used to the peripatetic nature of expat life… That may be a good move, but it's painful to see your own child upset like this.
"The Girls" - my little group of special friends are still together though! We drop our children at school, have a quick nose around the class and swiftly make out way to Starbucks for a long gossip. We vow to make this a regular Tuesday meet. For me especially, this is much appreciated as a work-from-home-mum, I rarely get to talk to adults. Well, apart from Tim, that is!
Another fantastic option now that Rhiannon is in year 1 is something called "drop off". Rather than me having to find a parking place near the school and walk her to the school door or fetch her after school, I can drive by and drop her off in the morning. After school, I drive by again and collect her.
This isn't quite as straightforward as it sounds because there are hundreds of other cars doing the same thing in a narrow one-way system. Naturally, most of the expat cars are enormous people carriers driven by women with an overinflated sense of entitlement and an underwhelming knowledge of driving protocol. Meet one of them in the only two way road and there is no way they will reverse or move out the way. They probably can't reverse their monstrous cars; even with the built in reversing camera they all seem to come with. Some even feel it's their right to drive the wrong way down the one way street. Very annoying.
Later in the week we get a list of classes and clubs the kids can join. Rhiannon wants to sign up for Gymnastics and Rainbows, so that's OK: apart from the gymnastics starting at a ridiculous 7.30 am in the morning. There's also an out of school class where she can learn Japanese, so I sign her up for a trial run there. With all the work I'm doing now, I can use any extra hour in the day I can get.
She's also desperate to play the violin so we will reluctantly look into that. She's been talking about playing the violin for over a year now and even asked Santa for one for Christmas… He gave her a toy Hello Kitty one. She was disgusted. Oh dear!
I didn't have the chance to try all these things as a child, so if she wants to, I'm right behind her.
