The first day of school

School started for both kids on Thursday, Sept 13th:  Julia at 8 a.m., Benjamin at 9 a.m. for this first day only.
Both were very nervous, but at 7 a.m. still able to put on a forced smile (or not).

Starting at 7:10 we all took the subway together to Julia's school, Sophie Scholl Gymnasium, which is

an all-girls academic high school.  She is starting in the 8th grade with a class of girls who have been together, more or less, since 5th grade, and I think she was mostly nervous about the social situation, and whether she would "end up sitting alone at lunch".  All four of us arrived there together by 7:45, but there was no way she wanted us taking pictures of her as we got near the school (so look a bit further down to see a picture or two we snuck in at the end of the day).  Julia wanted me, not Papi, to walk into class with her that morning -- probably to make it clear that she/I are not fluently German-speaking!  Her homeroom teacher seemed nice enough but somewhat surprised that Julia was from the USA.  (We bumped into the vice-principal shortly after and found out that she was planning to talk to the teacher about that after this first day... )  But as I walked away from Julia's classroom, I did see another girl come up and introduce herself to Julia.  Whew.

Benjamin's school, the Luisengymnasium, is a beautiful, old-city high school, built in 1901, right in the heart of downtown Munich.

Even though he would be in 6th grade at home, since kids start Gymnasium (high school) in the 5th grade here, we all decided it would be better for him to start with a group of kids (one year younger) who would all be new to the school and not necessarily know each other.  

They have a small ceremony on the first day at 9 a.m. (after the older kids are in class already) for the incoming children, to welcome them and their parents to school.  Here we are waiting for it to start, in the indoor courtyard which seems to serve as their auditorium, stage, gathering area. 

(Here are a couple pictures of the courtyard, taken after school, so you can see how impressive this inner-city building is!)

After the principal's welcoming remarks, the three 5th grade teachers each read out the names of the children in their homeroom class.  As each child was called, he or she went up on stage so that the official photographer (and all the parents) could take pictures of the class.  We were pleased to hear that Benjamin's teacher called his name first with the German pronunciation, then again said "Benjamin" the english way... so at least he had been informed he had a "foreigner" in his class! 

 (Principal on the left, teacher on the right.  Over 30 kids in this, the smallest, of the 5th grade classes.) 

It's hard to see the expression on Benjamin's face, but it seems like it was somewhere around then that it finally hit him that this was really happening.

I think it's quite smart of the school system here to start school on a Thursday, and then have the first two days be short, in order to ease the kids from summer to school mode.  So both kids got out early that first day (B first at 12:30), and Thomas and I spent a couple hours walking around downtown, which I would have enjoyed much more if my own stomach wasn't hurting somewhat in empathy with my kids...

Pick up time:

Yes, the first day did indeed turn out to be quite traumatic.  When we picked up Benjamin he was barely holding back the tears, and let them go once we were out of the school.  It is hard to be in a new place, with new people, but especially when you don't understand much of anything!  His German is not nearly as good as Julia's or mine at this point, and he had a real headache from trying to follow what was going on.  Poor kid, he was really pretty miserable.

Even though Julia had complained of a bad worry-stomach-ache that morning, luckily she ended up being more mature about letting things roll off her back if she didn't understand, and she seemed in relatively good shape when we picked her up after the first day (although she also claimed she had to fight back some tears a few times during the morning).  She said she understood about 10% of what was going on, but made an effort to speak some of her halting German to her teachers and classmates.  She was also still pretty skeptical about this whole public-German-school thing, however.  

Here is the entrance to Julia's school -- not quite the same architectural style as Benjamin's!

So we spent that first afternoon as a family comforting kiddos and then enduring the crowds at the school-supply section of our local department store, as we figured out what notebooks (with specific colored covers for each subject), writing utensils, geometry sets, calculators etc. their teachers had requested.  By evening I think the kids were more-or-less recovered, but still worried about the next day.

The second day of school:

Again, some worry-stomach-aches in the morning (including Mom)... but luckily when I picked them up at the end of their half-days both seemed happy!  Julia even said she'd had "fun" and had started hanging out with a couple of girls who seemed friendly.  When we found Benjamin outside his school, he was smiling and waving good-bye to one boy, and said that another in his class had come up to him and said "Us be friends?"  Yahoo, good news for everybody!  This may be manageable after all...  Stay tuned to see how the first full-week goes.