And it’s three weeks later... We have now gotten used to our new normal life with the kids going to school every day and Søren working from home (he jokes he is a stay-at-home dad). I have now had my book published and am done with conferences, so I can actually go to the office at the university. We also picked up our car, but had to go to the garage the next week because the fixing of the rear view camera (which was our condition before buying the car) only lasted a few days. So far, we haven’t been anywhere touristic, really, other than two shopping centres to get all kinds of stuff we needed and the ‘village’ of Takapuna. It’s up the road from us, has a lot of nice restaurants (which includes a delicious crêperie) and a beach right next door to the city centre. The weather has been fantastic (though quite warm for the kids to walk back from school in) and I was starting to think that 26 degrees and sun was how it always is here, until I got an e-mail from a new colleague here saying ‘Have you been enjoying the fantastic weather we’ve been having?’ Oh, this is not normal then?

Starting in school

On Thursday the 1^st of February, Linus had his introduction to the school from 9-11. That didn’t go all too well since he did not get his school login or his timetable, as we had been told he would. Maybe it was because he ended up joining the introduction session for international students – easy mistake to make since he is not from New Zealand. But he also is not an international student because he got a domestic student visa… So Søren walked for the third time back and forth to the school that day to help out, they found someone at Student Services to help with the login and the timetable, and met with a ‘dean’ (of which there are a lot in the school, so it does not mean the same as a dean in a university) who would bring him to his first class the next day in school (he didn’t get a tour either). Because when we later looked at the timetable, all his classes were all over the school – something that’s new for him because in Denmark students are in the same classroom in ‘folkeskolen’, which lasts until they are 16, and only change to a different classroom for cooking or science and technology.

Introductions

That same day we went to Birk’s school at 11.00 to meet with his teacher, Miss Kahn (yes, that is how the students should address the teacher here), who is from South Africa and has taught in Dubai and Malaysia. She is also new to the class so that was quite nice for Birk, because it meant that the first few days at school were used to get to know each other. His first homework was to make a powerpoint presentation about himself, so we had fun finding all kinds of pictures that showed all his family, his pets, his hobbies, and the recent pictures of 15 cm of snow on our garden furniture (they don’t really get snow here, and some of his classmates have never really seen snow). We also got to see his classroom – see pictures – and Birk is sitting at the ‘bilingual’ table, first one to the right, at the window, with, among others, a German girl who moved to New Zealand when she was five years old.

And then the next day, Friday 2 Feb, it was the first full school day – so off they were. Don’t they look handsome (if maybe not very happy :D)?