We are giving thanks to God for the way He has answered our prayers (and the prayers of so many of you) according to our desires for this first day of school. The children both woke up quite excited about their new adventure, and they demonstrated absolutely no hesitation about being left there this morning. Their school schedule is 8:30 until 11:30, when we get to pick them up for a two-hour lunch, returning them at 1:30 and then finally picking them up for the day at 4:30. They only have school on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. (There is no school on Wednesdays or on the weekend.) Miriam did immediately break into tears upon seeing me when I went to pick her up for lunch, but the tears quickly dried up as we were asking her brother how much he understood of what was said in French, and she inserted enthusiastically, "I understood one word: goûter!" (For all of you non-French speakers, that means "snack!" ;-)
We were grateful to have the two-hour lunch period for a rehearsal of the morning's events, and for re-energizing for the afternoon. When the time came for them to go back for the afternoon, Miriam had no trouble at all walking right back onto the playground where all the other children were already enjoying themselves. We were pleased to see her greet us with a big grin when we gathered with the other parents outside her classroom window at 4:30. As to Micaiah, he had nothing but good to say about his day. His teacher does speak a little bit of English, and she was therefore able to help him from time to time. Other than that, he caught on pretty quickly to the art of watching what the other kids were doing around him in order to know what to do next. (In fact, we found him at lunch time running across the courtyard with a group of boys from his class towards the lunchroom line--where some children do stay for the lunch period--as he had become quite the expert at the game of "following the leader".) He was able to give us a detailed report of everything they did today, and the teacher confirmed to Tim that things seemed to have gone very smoothly for him. We are grateful that he will be receiving some extra language help during class hours through a program the school system offers to foreign students.
So that's pretty much it for day 1. We know (and have already seen in some small ways) that the school year won't be without its challenges, but we are grateful for the way the Lord has led, and are committed to pursuing this avenue for at least one year to see what the Lord has for us through it.
Click here to see a slideshow of some of the kids' first-day experiences.
4 comments:
It's wonderful to see how the Lord answered prayer and brought you all successfully through this first day of school. We'll be praying that the second day (and subsequent days) go just as smoothly! Thanks for sharing pictures and an update so quickly!
Praise the Lord!
We're so thankful for a good first day!
I remember those days. We lived across from the school yard where Jon and Jess went---I think they were not as brave and I was probably the one crying!
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