One week of school

Sydni and Paige started school here on Tuesday, March 9th, so they have been in school for over a week now. It seems like a few weeks to me but I checked and it has only been one! They are both going to the Prague British School, which is an English-speaking international private school with several campuses in Prague. Sydni is at the Kamyk location in Year 2 (British equivalent of US first grade), and Paige is at the Modrany location in the Reception/Foundation class.  These two locations are just a few minutes apart.

Sydni’s class has 13 students – 11 girls and 2 boys. There is one other American in the class and the rest of the students are from all over Europe. Paige’s class has 24 students, which are split into 2 groups that cross over throughout the day based on skill level in whatever subject they are working on at the time. Her class is just as diverse as Sydni’s class and actually includes several siblings of students in Sydni’s grade. Many of their classmates also live in Pruhonice, so we plan to see them outside of school as well.

The girls are enjoying school and have great stories to tell each day. One of my favorite parts of the day is the twenty minute ride to and from their schools. This has become a time for us to talk and laugh since there is no DVD player in the car and no radio station that we can understand. Sydni’s favorite story to tell is when a classmate asked her how to say “hello” in America and Sydni answered, “You just said it.” Paige’s favorite is how she rode the bus to “Sydni’s big school” for PE in the gym. If we aren’t laughing at each other, we are hysterically laughing at the lady on the GPS trying to pronounce the names of the Czech streets (i.e. Kunraticka Spojka, Novodvorska, and our favorite, Ceskoslovenskeho Exilu).

Sydni does miss her teachers and classmates at LCA and speaks of them often. Each day last week as I dropped her off, I would hope and pray that she would enjoy her day, like her teachers and make new friends. As the week progressed and she was transitioning well, I began to think about her teachers and classmates at LCA and how hard this must be for them. Sydni has moved on to a new school and environment, but they are in their normal routine and actually feel the void of her presence. I suppose this is true of all our family and friends. We are in a new place, new home, new exciting challenges with no familiarity and no expectations, but the fact remains that we left a void. I cannot imagine what that void is like, but I hope that each day the void is filled with healing, understanding and love knowing that we are settling in and happy (and if, understandably, that is just not enough, remember that we will be back in the states to visit during the summer!).

There is so much more to tell, but I will save it for future blogs. I will try to write something each week so stay tuned. You can click “Subscribe: Post Comments” at the bottom and it will add a link on your internet toolbar that will be bold when a new post is added to the blog, but I will still continue to send out e-mails about new posts too.

As always, please keep us in your prayers because we will always need them!