This is one building of classrooms at the Elementary school where Sophia attends.
another view of the courtyard.
Her classroom, crowded and dirty.
Her table mate. He is quite mischievous, but I don't think mean-spirited. Today when I picked her up he wasn't even in the seat next to her, he was outside and the teacher didn't know. I was planning on talking to his mom. He likes to touch Sophia's pencil when she is trying to write, and mess with her feet a lot. Writing Characters is hard enough without this egghead trying to mess her up. And I think he does this because he is mischievous, not because she is a foreigner, the last guy she had problems with in kindergarten used to kick her and call her an ugly foreigner. That is not this boy's personality at all. This little kid is likable and always talks to me....but still. Enough is enough. It has been a few weeks and it is time for Sophia to be able to relax and do her work.
Her classroom is on the right. First floor, first door.
All the parents waiting to pick up their kid. They only do this in first grade. We have to walk in and check off our name. We also cannot get in the gate without a pass. This is new.
Each kid has a card to put in these phones to call home if they need to. Sophia has tried it one or five times :). Now that she knows how to use it we told her to use it in an emergency. Convenient.
The story of Sophia getting into this school is worth telling. I am sure I won't get the details right since we were not actually here for registration. It was at that time that JS called us in the States and said: 'come back! come back' and we replied: 'we are trying!!!'
I had put two local friends in charge of helping us register Sophia. The problem with that was all of our documents are English, etc. AND the big game changer was the new principle of the school. He was changing everything. My friend said: 'he doesn't take bribes? then I don't know what to do' such has been the system for so long for non-local residents ("countryside" folk) trying to get in this school.
Thankfully one of the friends had realized that that very afternoon someone needed to be there to get a number for the 'line' for non-locals. JS went (so thankful!). Then they realized that in order to KEEP the place in line for the next day, people were camping out all night. So our other local friend found someone to keep our place in line and paid them for it (the things parents do for their kids and school, lol). Sophia ended up being number 23 and they were only taking 20! BUT five people, who obviously did not get the memo about keeping your space in line, left. Sophia ended up being 18! When JS went back to wait and register, people/parents had been in an uproar, police were called, a riot almost really did ensue. JS admitted to being a bit scared by it all. I think there was another hiccup over something with our documents, but because JS had been chatting it up with someone there who knew something about something...it all worked out and Sophia got in. Thank you JS! Those Cookie bars were for all your hard work!
Sophia loves school. We are taking it week by week, but we are okay with it so far. Her teacher seems unorganized, and we thought our misunderstanding of her texts of the homework was just our poor Chinese, but as we got locals to look at it, they had trouble too. We think she is doing it so fast that she is mistyping and putting in the wrong character, and most people just know what she means, but for us trying to read it so literally it becomes hard. We will have to work on that.
Other than that, so far so good!
