Chinese School Semester Begins

Yes, the craziness known as Chinese Elementary School + (some semblance of) Homeschool, started on September 1. 

The crazier story is that Tobin actually got into the school we wanted by the amazing grace of God. Our friend, J, who also was trying to get is American daughter into school, went to a lot of meetings with the education bureau on our behalf. The local factory/company we work for also tried to help. Everywhere, with all the new laws, the answer was: 'doesn't look good'. "You don't fit into one of our four classifications, so maybe there will be room at a village school." 

We still did all of the necessary paperwork and on the assigned day we turned it in to the school we wanted even though we knew it was pretty hopeless. On that day, J, who happened to be renewing his visa, was discussing the issue with the labor bureau. This was just a conversation, these people give us our specific visa, J wasn't asking for help per se. But the guy said, "Hey, I think there is a law that with your kind of visa, you get the choice of school for your kids". WHAT? 

The law was holding us back, and now another law let us in! The school asked J to show him this law and he did, and they said okay! Tobin and our friend's daughter were put in with the first of 4 tiers of groupings to be let in the school. We were so amazed and thankful. 

Fifty students, one teacher.

Here they all are! The older girls were SO excited Tobin was joining them.

First day:

Finally they got the uniforms. This was the real first day.

Gabrielle does tot school with me in the mornings and goes to her kindergarten in the afternoon. She loves it!

Don't try this at home. We are currently working on how to improve this situation. It is not as unsafe as it looks, really. Traffic is horrible, it would take 3x as long in a car.

And the homework...oh the homework! How else are you going to learn to write one of the hardest written languages in the world?

And it was a HOT day, so ya gotta get comfortable.
Sophia and Isabella have a ton of homework. And we only make them do HW for one class! Third and fourth grades are the hardest, things really pick up!

For this transition, I really slowed up on homeschool. We had a great first 4-5 weeks prior to this, so we slowed many things. Tobin went both morning and afternoon for the first 3 weeks to get him really used to it. Now he will just go in the mornings.

He actually does like being in school and is doing great. All of them are!