The first week of school

Admittedly I was a little nervous as we took our boys to school for the first time. Would it be too much for them to handle - spending a whole day with a class full of people who they do not understand? The first week of school is now behind us and the boys (and their mother) survived.


Josiah started the week excited about going to school. The first day he walked in a little leery of the other kids and his teacher. He was a trooper though and when Ted picked him up the second day his teacher said he was "very delicious" - a common term of endearment here. That's when things started to change for Josiah. The next few days he would again wake up very excited about going to school, but then he would burst into tears when he was dropped off. The funny thing is that when we pick him up after school he says he had a great time at school! The first week he did fall off the swing and came home with a bite wound - maybe next week will be better. We did receive some encouragement from him that his going to school will help him learn the language. The other day he said a sentence in English that was structured the way a sentence would be structured in the national language. Instead of saying "Caleb wears house shoes", he said "Caleb house shoes wears." That's a little bit of progress - wrong language but progress anyway.


Caleb woke up the first day of school NOT wanting to go and very nervous about how the other kids would treat him. I think that had something to do with the fact that our language tutor told us to teach him to say "please don't hit me"! Anyway Caleb went to school the first day much like he gets immunizations. He very bravely walked into class and sat in his chair - then the tears began to roll down his face. This was difficult for me to see because I know that under normal, English speaking circumstances, he would LOVE to go to school and would be too excited to sit still. Anyway, he came home that day and said that "school was boring". He is one of the oldest kids in the class and most of the activities are directed to younger students. When he woke up upset on the third day our hearts dropped - was this what it was going to be like every morning? Well, we soon found out that he was upset because he thought he wasn't going to be able to go to school. THANK YOU! Each day since then he has been excited about going to school and runs to his class each morning. He told me the other day that the kids in his class don't call him Caleb, but something that sounds like "jaji". I said the national word for foreigner and he affirmed that that was what they were calling him.


A Big day in the life of our boys (and us)!