Life Goes On

Katherine is back in school this week. Yesterday was an easy entry, parent-teacher conferences held in the morning led to only 2 class periods in the afternoon. Today she'll be back in the swing of things, all her classes plus Marching Band. She's still a little sore in the throat so she won't be playing much if at all, but overall feeling just fine and ready to jump back in.

Jonathon has started cello at school. So far his lessons have entailed taking the cello in and out of the case. It's right where Nicholas was at the beginning of last year too.

Speaking of Nicholas he keeps telling me he wishes he was learning the saxophone instead of the callo. Arg. Well, too bad kid. This year it's strings again. Next year when we move to Jordan we can talk. I believe that ACS has a band but no orchestra, though there are strings teachers in country.

Rebecca is now taking Arabic instead of French. It came about via a passing thought... Rebecca wasn't thrilled with French, why couldn't she take Arabic instead, especially as Katherine and Ian are both learning as well and she'll be taking it next year in Jordan? French was first period, shared with Language Arts on alternating days. Finding someplace that taught 1) Arabic and 2) Arabic as a first period class took a little searching but not much. The high school practically next door to the middle school had just such a class. Off went the email to the MS counselor: Could Rebecca take a class at the HS then return to the MS for the rest of her regular classes? The answer was encouraging: Absolutely, another student already had such an arrangement. We just needed permission from the principal and counselors at the high school. Within days, everything was arranged and yesterday Rebecca had her first day. Still young, she wanted mom with her until the last minute, fearful of being the first one in the classroom and obvious, and fearful of being the last one in the classroom and obvious.

We arrived at the HS a half hour early to check in at the counselor's office and find her classroom. Not only does she have a friend from MS (now in HS) in her class, her teacher is wonderful. She's asked Rebecca to come back after school twice this week in order to play some catch-up, and outed her right at the beginning as an interloping middle schooler. She took it in stride and was ready to go back this morning.

This adventure is beneficial 2-fold. Not only does she get a little jump into Arabic, but she also gets a taste of real American high school life. She was bummed since realizing that all the neat stuff Katherine has access to (Crew! Homecoming!) wasn't even remotely possible for her. She may not be able to do most of the high school activities, but now she can still have a sense of belonging to them and that's worth so much to her.