Kids' First Day of School

Today the kids started school, at a school named “Country of Paraguay” (weird, I know). We were very nervous about how it would go, though the kids weren’t nervous at all. They were actually really excited about the school hours, which are from 2pm-6:30pm. As is common in other countries, they have some students come in the morning, and others in the afternoon, in order to serve more kids in a single school. Their uniforms are like track suits.

After work, I met Amy at the front of the school to wait for the kids to be released. First came Alexander, walking in the line of his class. When he saw us, he started smiling a big, happy, half-shy grin, like he was trying to play cool while he was showing off. When he came out, he was so happy and proud to be in the big school. While we waited for Jacob to come out, he wasted no time in chasing some girls from his class around the patio area.

Jacob came out just as happy. He kept telling us how all the kids circled around him and kept asking him over and over if he really spoke English. Jacob was telling the story like he was annoyed, but you could tell it was really fun for him to be the center of attention. He said he had no trouble understanding the teachers’ Spanish (which surprised us), and he was top of the class on a reading test (which didn’t really surprise us), but that the hardest part was that the teacher wrote in cursive—which of course is no longer taught in the Houston schools.