Starting school

Today was the open house at my big boy's new school. My new boss was nice enough to give me the day off. We had planned to take the whole family, but L woke up at 6am vomiting. Poor little sweetie. She perked up by 9am, but we thought the school would appreciate her staying at home. We haven't found a school for her yet, not that we've been able to look. M's school does have a 3yo program, but we wanted to look around before committing. Since M is starting real school (kindergarden, or pre-primario here), we had to make a choice before we arrived.

The school we chose is bilingual- they will spend part of the day in the Spanish classroom and part in the English classroom. His English teacher grew up in Washington Heights, where I lived during grad school. It's funny how intertwined my life is with the DR. I loved the teachers- they were all warm and smiley and kind. M started off clinging to me and refusing to talk, but within an hour he was playing quietly. I hope the other kids will be kind to him. I don't know yet if he'll be the only foreigner in his class.

After visiting the classroom, I spent like 3 hours trying to get him registered. I thought we just had to turn in a few more forms. I'm not sure if it is just the DR way of doing things, or if registering a kid in real school takes more time/effort than I realized. Perhaps a little bit of both.

Most of the expat kids here go to a different school, but since that school has no Spanish instruction and caters to the Dominican elite, we chose to go a different route. There are many to choose from and it's scary to make this decision from so far away. Today, it felt like the right choice. I hope it turns out that way.