Today we got to visit the school Christina will be attending next year. The school was having their year end closing ceremony outside. The plan was for me to stay with Christina for the closing ceremony and then let her go to the classroom by herself to attend class with some students her age. On the way there, of course, Christina was adamant about not staying there by herself. According to her "rules", I was to stay with her the entire time. Well, sorry but no can do. It was hard but I had to tell her this is what we're doing and that mom's aren't supposed to go to the classroom with their kids. There were tears and at one point I actually was a little nervous she might try to run for an escape. Thank goodness that didn't happen.
On the way to the front door, she kept saying, "I don't like this school." I just had to remind her that she had no way of knowing that without even entering the front door yet!! Everyone was so nice and welcoming to us. At the closing ceremony outside on the field, we sat on our towel along with all of the other students, parents and teachers. Christina continued to say she didn't like it and made up her mind that all the kids were babies. LOL! We watched as the students gave awards to some of their favorite teachers and sang songs. The grand finale was the "cha cha" dance which was hilarious. It was so funny to see all of the other kids, parents and teachers stomping their feet and twirling around to the cha cha. Christina stood with her arms crossed as I did the moves, but finally joined in and showed that beautiful smile towards the end.
The principal arranged for 3 students Christina's age to show her around. Once the girls introduced themselves to her, she seemed to feel better about me leaving. We all told her that when she was ready to go, they would call me on my cell phone to come pick her up. I left and kept waiting and waiting for that phone to ring. It was about 3 hours later that they called for me to pick her up. When I came to pick her up she was in the school office with a soda in her hand. She was with one of her new friends and had a big smile on her face. When we walked out of the building, the first words out of her mouth this time were, "I like this school." WHEW! I wasn't sure what to expect. We were so relieved that she had a good experience.
She just talked and talked about her day. The kids at school had gotten their new yearbooks today and they all wanted Christina to sign theirs. She also said she met a boy from the Ukraine and a girl from Russia. She had been so scared that they would laugh at her, but quickly found out that instead they all wanted to be her friend. They asked her to say different words in Latvian and Russian. We had a good talk about how sometimes we're scared of things because we imagine bad things happening in our mind. If we go ahead and do the thing anyway, we usually find out that it isn't nearly as scary as we thought it would be.
We just told her that we were so proud of her because she did something she was scared to do and saw that it wasn't so scary after all. It took lots of courage for her to go to that new school where everyone speaks a different language. We're just hoping that she'll still feel good about school in August when school starts.
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