PS3 kids attend Catholic School in Spain...and survive!

The alarm is set for 7:20 am so the Kids can get out the door to school by 8:30 am without too much time left over for ball bouncing, bickering, and generally being annoying.  School starts at 9.  Alarms and tired parents be damned, the Kids get up at 7 and start making their own breakfasts so they can get in an episode of Punky Brewster before school.  The sun is not yet up.  There is not even a hint of it on the horizon giving the Parents the false impression that there might be a few more hours of sleep ahead.  But once the echo of sliding chairs hits the ear of the sleeping Mom, fear strikes her heart that the kids are spilling shit all over the kitchen floor and she pulls herself out of bed rather quickly.  Dad remains dead to the world until his electronic device gives him the go-ahead to rise.

Then the sun graces us with its presence.

Sunrise over our neighborhood, the Albayzin.  (Taken from the bathroom window, which should, but doesn't, have curtains.)

Good morning to the very first day of feeling like a human being in Spain!  Ah, that’s much better!  It turns out that moving to a new country with two kids is not easy.  Who knew??  In the immortal words of Condoleezza Rice, “I don’t think that anybody could have predicted…”

While running all over this city for the past week in an effort to get settled, Michael has had a head cold and I contracted a violent aversion to ham.  But he, in true superhuman fashion, has pushed ahead, simply bringing along his Kleenex.  I, on the the other hand, wimped out almost entirely when two days ago my intestines began a revolt against ham, cheese, and olive oil.  I managed two vital errands in that time span – the supermarket and the bank (where, after two visits, we still don't have a bank account).  Then I was back in whatever bed was closest to a bathroom.  I got up to make dinner so the kids were eating at a reasonable hour.  Otherwise the option was going out to eat, having to wait until 8pm to do so.

The girls are the gold medalists this week.  They have taken to their new school like champs, so much cooler than I would have been or that we expected them to be.  They are attending an all-girls’ Catholic school, the only school we could get them into on such short notice.  Michael and I both had our unique concerns.  Projecting my own insecurities, I worried that they would have a hard time making friends, find frustration at not being able to understand the teachers, wouldn’t like the food at lunch, and during their daily mass in the chapel would say a little too loudly “What’s god?”  

True to his inner Catholic boy, Michael’s concerns seemed to center around rules and whether the kids were going to wittingly or unwittingly break them, but in either case end up in a fiery hell.  Did we buy the appropriate clothing?  Would they accidentally wear a piece of jewelry to school?  Would they get in line to take communion thinking it was snack time?  (Knowing what we know now, I think it’s pretty safe to say that no matter how hungry a kid is, she’ll never be interested in having a cracker placed in her mouth by an old guy in a robe.  Unless, in Willa’s case, it’s a Cheeto puff.  Then, I'll bet you, she'd consider it).

While Michael and I were faltering at home, the kids were kicking ass at school.  It was with serious trepidation that we picked them up at the end of their first day, 4:45pm.  We wondered which one of them would be screaming the loudest to get them the hell of there and I was already coming up with a list of bribes.  But we found them alive and well at dismissal, surrounded by girls asking them questions.  Willa later said she couldn’t actually answer any of the questions because they were firing them off so fast, one right after the other.  So she just said nothing and let everyone else talk.

One of the first things we heard about was lunch.  The rule is you can’t go to recess unless you eat all your food.  Every single last bite.  Of the cafeteria food, since no one is "allowed" to bring their own lunch.  And apparently there is a teacher who walks around checking to see if you are eating.  On their first day, carrot soup was served.  I don’t think I ate carrot soup until I was well into my 20's and I’m not sure I’ve eaten it since.  I can’t imagine serving carrot soup to a bunch of grade school kids and expecting them to eat every last bite.  But the girls told us that when they saw a teacher walking around grabbing a spoonful of soup with one hand, the top of girls heads’ with the other hand in order to shove the soup in their mouths, they decided to eat every last drop in their bowls even though it was "disgusting".  My jaw dropped, as did yours, but Michael kind of laughed and said “That’s Catholic school.” 

By contrast, at PS3, kids take a bite of their apple and throw away the rest.  They might not even open their milk but NY State rules are that once you remove food from the serving line, you can’t put it back.  So, sadly, most of the food in the lunchroom gets thrown away (or composted!).  And, it goes without saying, if a kid came home and told their parents that a teacher held their head and made them take a bite of food, you can bet your ass you’d have a well-organized parent uprising the very next day.

We learned something else on that first car ride home – that both of our girls might actually be in the wrong grade.  Both of them are with kids who are one and two years older than them.  When we got home around 5:15 pm, Clio sat down and pulled her homework out of her backpack.  She needed Michael’s help with most of it, since it was in Spanish.  He sat down with her and except for dinner, the two of them did not get up until 9pm.  Clio’s math lesson was decimals and fractions.  Clio is a math whiz, but there were still quite a few tears of frustration.  Mama Bear tried to jump in and argue that this is too much, they’re in the wrong grade, we have to ask them to be re-assigned to a lower level.  But the girls wouldn’t hear of it.  “No!  We want a challenge!”  So a deal was struck: we would keep them in their current classes, and in exchange, they were simply going to do their best.  They were not going to worry about grades or tests or cry over things they didn’t understand.  They were here to simply do their best. 

Clio doing her homework (and not eating her cheese snack)

The girls have now been in school here for a week and this morning they told us that all the kids at school are asking whether they like this school or their old school better.  Our kids don't know what to say, because it's like comparing apples and oranges.  Willa pointed out that at PS3, they get to do things like art, music, and dance.  At PS3, a music class involves every kid seated at a percussion instrument while Mr. Bruce teaches them beats and rhythms.  Yesterday’s music class here at the Spanish school involved the teacher bringing in an ipad and playing music.  Willa was appalled.  Here, the teachers give them a list of things to memorize (i.e. the seven continents) and tell them there’s going to be a test next week.  Their teachers at PS3 taught them a song about the seven continents to help memorize them.  Then the class broke up into seven groups and each of them drew a map of each continent (or something arty like that).

On the other hand, here the kids are friendlier.  Willa made a friend the very first day whom she was enamored with even though she had no idea what her name was.  Clio told us on the first day that “From the minute I walked in, they acted like they knew me forever.”  Lots of hugs and gleeful screams.  It made me laugh because I could picture the over-exuberance she was describing.  Perhaps she was wondering whether or not the kids were being genuine.  But I was also incredibly grateful.  The girls here give each other hugs, hold hands everywhere - in line, walking somewhere, or just standing around.  We’ve heard more than once about how "everyone here is so friendly".  Clio told us that if a new kid came in at PS3, it would be hard for them for a while because everyone would already have their own friends.  

Also, she says, at PS3, kids don’t hold hands with each other after 1^st grade.  Which this mom thinks might have more to do with the presence of boys but we'll touch on that social paradigm later.  Maybe.