First Day of School

Yesterday was Kate and Clarks first day at the American Overseas School of Rome. It is a private school that uses an American based curriculum and all the faculty speaks english. A lot of the teachers are american, in fact, both Kate and Clark's teachers and the principle are American. Even though it is an 'American' school, it is very diverse, as far as who attends there. A lot of them are expats like us, but a lot are Italian or from other foreign countries. I figure its Italian families that want their kids to grow up speaking english - which is smart - have them bilingual early on. Kate and Clark were very excited for their first day of school. I was a bit worried about their reaction to waking up and getting out the door after having 2 weeks of absolutely no schedule - but they did great. They even skipped and ran most of the mile walk to school.

When we got there, I walked them in (it is completely fenced and has guards with machine guns at the gates), took them to the office where they got to meet the Principal of the Elementary school and then got a little tour of the school. After that we got to go to their classrooms and meet their teachers. There are 2 second grade classes and they got split up between them.

The classes do a lot together, so they'll still be together (not that they care!) It was so sweet, there were kids waiting outside the classroom for them - everyone wanted to meet the new kids. Their teachers introduced them to a few kids and then they were off! One last hug for mom and off to meet new friends. I was so impressed with the other kids there - it was like they all knew how hard it was to be the new kid and they embraced Kate and Clark. As I was leaving the school I saw a girl guiding Kate around, showing her where they went to play and introducing her to other girls. Made it easy for me too, knowing they would be just fine. Charly and JR were quite upset that they did not get to stay and play and cried for the first few minutes of our walk home. When I picked them up in the afternoon - it was nothing but excitement and talk of new friends and how much they loved their new school. Hooray!