Who Will Teach Our Children?

Today was spent in hot pursuit of a good school for Jonah, Aviva and Ruthie. We went to a nearby public school in the morning only to find that the Nivel Primeria -- the lower grade level -- comes only in the afternoon; older kids are in the morning. Apparently, there are three choices at many public schools -- attend from 8:15 to 1, or 1 to 4:30, or both (although not all schools offer the "completo" school day). We headed down to a very prestigious public school -- Escuela Normal Superior No. 1 en Lenguas Vivas where we found the school staff very welcoming. Before long, they were planning for Jonah and Aviva to do placements tests (in math, not Spanish!), with the idea that they would start on Wednesday. Ruthie can start tomorrow in the Jardín des Infantes. It is a run-down school from the late 1950s, but we sense a good spirit there. The big problem: the classes that are not over-enrolled (i.e. 18 and 22, respectively) were in the afternoon session. The classes that run all day have 27 and 31 students already and they were hesitant (as were we) to add any more students. We will continue look into some other public schools in Palermo (Lenguas Vivas is in Recoleta, five quick subte stops away), as well as one of the Jewish day schools.

More tomorrow, to be sure....

A few other notes from the day:

--all the atms in the city (it appears) stopped working today. This could be a technical malfunction or, more likely, a policy decision made somewhere within the banking world. No one seemed to be especially bothered -- at least not in a dramatic, yell and scream in the middle of Av. Sante Fe kind of way -- about the fact that no one could access their money for the rest of the day (what tomorrow holds we don't know).

--Thirty steps from home, we passed a man in the middle of the sidewalk, peddling his bike. The bike, however, was propped up so that he was not moving but rather powering a knife-sharpening stone. He calmly pedaled and sharpened a long blade as people scurried by and the occasional fascinated tourist (yo) took photos.

The day ended with baths (which, along with using hand sanitizer after all trips on the subte, is our modest effort against catching H1N1), and more games of "BS" aka "I Doubt It" which Ruthie managed to sweep (defeating the reigning champion, Eve).