Second, we have yet to be blown over by the food here. Admittedly, we have primarily sampled "normal" food in restaurants in our neighborhood. But the basics for a vegetarian -- empanadas, pastas, pizza, salad....nothing has really rocked our boat. Pasteles, on the other hand, do manage to evoke a greater level of appreciation. Dulce de leche is everywhere and in everything. There are bakeries every few hundred yards, producing dozens and dozens of different pastries and cakes and other forms of sugar delivery. Alas, those same bakeries do not seem to make good bread which is, thus far, in short supply.
But now to the main event -- we have a school (s). (Warning: for those not dying to hear about every detail of the schooling situation, feel free to wait for another post!)
The day began with Eve heading off to the district education office to inquire about local schools. Both of us were feeling uncomfortable with the school we had found yesterday. While the people were exceptionally friendly and welcoming, they only had space for the kids to come half a day, the school was quite decrepit and large, and it was a good subway ride away. We had an appointment set up for one of the nearby Jewish day schools tomorrow. But we thought -- why not inquire about the local public schools (which we had not yet seen in our walks around the area).
Eve and Aviva returned from the school visit ecstatic -- after a visit to the district office they had found the place we should have looked first: the local neighborhood school: Escuela 20, en communidad 9. Just five minutes away is a sweet little school with small classes for the kids, a small outdoor play area, a lunch room -- the whole bit. There is also a Jardin des Infantes attached, where we thought Ruthie could also go. We scurried around making copies of all appropriate documents and Eve filled out the various forms (all in Spanish, of course). We returned to a warm welcome from the school staff (all women -- in two days I have seen exactly one man in the public schools) who quickly consulted about where to place Jonah and Aviva. We met Jonah's teacher for a moment, and she seemed serious and competent (Jonah says mean, but I don't think so) and eager to see Jonah tomorrow.
Who knows how it will go, and there will no doubt be tears and difficult moments, but I can't help but believe the end result will be positive -- they will learn Spanish, learn about how other people live, make friends, and gain a new level of appreciation to the variety of peoples and places in the world. If they learn a little math, that would be fine too.
I cannot help but compare this to my experience in Gundelfingen, Germany, back in 1974, when I arrived to enter the third grade with virtually no German at all. (My father was there Herr Doktor Professor Direktor of the UMass-Freiburg exchange program). While the first weeks were indeed quite difficult (I was put in the first grade, and then moved to the third, was bugged by the kids for pretending to play baseball by myself when no one would talk to me), I have such good memories of that year. Within the month I was speaking German and fully a part of my class. That year was, to a large degree, behind my wish to send the kids to school in a foreign country. So I can' t help but imagine the kids' experience through that lens.
I must say that we heard the following statements a number of times before we arrived:
--the public schools are no good.
--they won't let your kids in anyway, because they are too full
--it is a bureaucratic nightmare to get in
--you must send your kids to a private school.
I can't evaluate the first statement just yet (although by all appearances the school seems just fine -- a real, live, local public school, with big hallways, kids at desks, things on the wall, a flag or two, a bust of a famous old guy who gave his name to the school, serious teachers). But I can evaluate the others -- both schools were more than happy to accept our kids. Too full? Lenguas Vivas was definitely on the fuller side, although they were going to put Jonah and Aviva into classes of 18 and 22 -- nothing more than we'd expect in Amherst. Bureaucracy? They wanted copies of all the materials that Eve so wisely had prepared and copied (health records, report cards, passports), but were fully satisfied with what we had and were ready to have the kids come to school the next day. Don't worry -- I am not about to criticize the decisions others made -- we may very well have ended up in a private school if we had seen one first (the Martin Buber school, for example, is right near by, but had no space at all). But I think both Eve and I feel very good that we found a good public school near to our temporary home. More reports to follow, to be sure.
And so they begin tomorrow, and early, and late: they start at 8:15 a.m. and go to 4:20! Now, this includes an hour and fifteen minute lunch break, where the kids can go home or out to lunch with parents, or eat in the school. This is a far cry from the 15 minutes the kids get to wolf down their food at Wildwood. This will also help with the transition -- for the first week or more, we will likely meet the kids for lunch and hear about the trials of the morning. More than anything, we expect them to be exhausted from trying to understand Spanish.
As for Ms. Ruthie, the Jardin attached to Jonah and Aviva's school was full so they brought us -- literally, Graciela, the staffperson in the Jardin, walked us two blocks -- to another public kindergarten that is overseen by the director at the first school. This Jardin was in an old hotel donated to the city by the owners. It looked very sweet, with a different floor for three-year-olds, four-year-olds, and five-year-olds. Tomorrow we return for a discussion with the two teachers but we assume that they will take our Ruthie -- who wouldn't want to?? We left there with kisses (in Argentina, it is always un beso, one kiss on the cheek, to anyone, even if you just met them five minutes previously (as was the case here)).
We left to head straight to the children's clothing store to buy the kids their uniforms. All boys and girls where white doctor's jackets while the kindergarteners wear a blue checkered jacket with a fake blue tie -- it has to be seen to be believed. Jonah especially was thrilled that he looks like a scientist. A few blocks away we picked up school supplies -- very specific: two three-ring binders for Jonah, filled with graph papers and lined paper; three small notebooks for Aviva; scissors, pencils, erasers. They are now set to become Argentine students.
We came home to savor (or not) the fine taste of Yerbe Mate, the national tea drink, which is consumed through a metal straw from a bowl, shared (germs and all) with your friends and family. I believe this is the definition of "a taste that will grow on you." It reminds me of my trip to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) with Anthony Bregman in 1990. We were eager to be purified (something we desperately needed) by "taking the waters" of Karlovy Vary. Except that it tasted like drinking liquid rotten eggs. It was so bad that we had to wash each sip down with the great elixir of life -- Coke. Why continue? We just felt we wanted to benefit from these magical waters. And indeed something magical happened: by the next day, after suffering through many pints of the horrible stuff, we found that the rotten egg taste had disappeared and we actually came to like the taste. We just drank ourselves into liking it, like the other automatons taking the waters with us. I guess that's what they call hegemony.
A little "skyping" with Jonah's friend Andreas (didn't we dream about video phone calls as kids in the early 1970s??), and everyone was off to bed, anxious about the first day of school.
Bring back some of those pastries!
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