First Day of School

Yesterday (August 22) was the first day of school for Christopher and Matthew.

We had quite a time finding the right school for them in Lausanne.  We did not feel great about enrolling them in the local public schools.  While we heard good things about the Swiss public schools, we were worried about sending them to a French-only school. Several people advised us that, if you immerse your kids in a foriegn language school, it will take 3 months before they are not miserable.  It would be worth it if we were going to be here a full year, but not for half a year.  They would just be getting their feet under them when it would be time to leave.

There were a couple of other options.  There is an International School in Lausanne.  This English-only school looked quite similar to their school in the US. While we did apply, we did not expect to get a spot. The school reserves spots for business sponsors (large corporations with lots of ex-pats in the area).  As we have no corporate affiliation, we were told our application would be at the bottom of the pile. (An interesting note here is that just today we received an email from the International School letting us know that the boys did get a spot for the fall.  What does this say about the economy?)

This reality did force us to look hard at other school options, leading us to the Ecole Bilingue de la Suisse Romande.   This is a bilingual French-English school.  It is very small--about 90 students in K-5.  We felt this would be the perfect option for us--some French, some English, small school, downtown location.  Perfect!  As I kept telling the boys, this was the perfect spot--half the kids would be English speakers like them and the other half want to be English speakers (like them).

So, after some email correspondence with the very friendly and welcoming headmistress, we signed up, sight unseen.

And today was the first day of school.

We all had the usual start of school jitters.  What would it be like?  Would they make friends?

Here are some photos of the kids on our way to school today.  We caught the bus downtown a half block from our apartment, rode it downtown, and walked to the school down the steepest street in the city.  Twenty-two minutes, door to door.

 

At the bus stop.

Past the Swedish Embassy and other official looking buildings.

Down the steepest hill in Lausanne.

We made it!

As might be expected, Matthew bounded into his class and said "bonjour!" to his classmates.  Christopher was a little more hesitant.  He entered the class with a simple wave.  We expect Matthew to learn more French than Christopher.  Being younger makes him less self-conscious and way more willing to just babble in an effort to communicate.

We will see how this all pans out, but there are a couple of interesting/attractive features at the outset.

First, there is no homework.  Zero.  None.  Frankly, we are not big proponents of excessive homework, so this is a welcome respite for all of us. However, we of course have not left all of our anxieties at home, so we will be keeping up on their Durham school activities and will be assigning them homework of our own.  Oh well, some habits die hard.

Second, they are served a snack and (hot) lunch provided by the school.  So I'm free until January of the daily chore of preparing and packing school lunches.  Let me repeat:  I do not have to make school lunch or snack for 5 months.  Bliss!

Third, we were not expected to purchase ANY school supplies.  Zero.  None.  Not a pencil or a pencil case or a set of think colored markers or a set of thick colored markers or a three-ring binder.  Nothing.  It's all built in to the tuition.  So we did not have to find the Swiss version of Target or try to figure out if we really needed to search longer to find the prescribed 18-color marker set when we could only find the 10- or 20-marker sets.

This combination -- no homework, no supplies, and school-provided hot lunch -- explains why, in the photos above, the boys are carrying nothing on their way to school.  It's a strange experience to walk out the door on our way to school carrying absolutely nothing, but it's also very pleasant.

One other thing:  Today, the second day of school, the entire school went on an all day surprise outing.  They told neither the parents nor the kids where they were going.  We were just told to drop them off by 8:30 and pick them up at 5:30.  When we dropped them off this morning one of the teachers let slip that they were taking the kids to something special in Fribourg, a city about an hour away, which means they are driving, though in what vehicle(s), with what driver(s), we don't know.  I guess we'll learn the details when we pick them up tonight.  It's hard to imagine this happening at a U.S. school.

 Mark and I have been back at work for two weeks now.  As you can see from the photo below, we share a table in our apartment, sitting a few feet from each other, with our laptops nearly touching.  This is a whole new level of togetherness!  Mark's class at UNIL in a few weeks, so that will add some intrigue to our work situation.

We are likely to have setbacks, but school is off to a good start.