That first day of school, Søren and I were, of course, extremely curious to hear how it went for the kids, and happily they both got back, sweaty and all from walking back in the heat, with positive stories to tell. Linus had already met another boy who is a year ahead of him and he can join his group of friends during the lunch break etc. And Birk met a Swedish boy at school – he lives in Malmö – who is also only there for a temporary stay.

Timetables

One of the things that rather puzzles us is the timetables in the school (photo’s are now added to the Starting School photo series). The one that Linus got we can still understand – it runs for 10 days, and day 1 and day 5 are always a Monday, and day 5 and day 10 always a Friday. So, Linus’ first school day was Day 5 of the schedule, since it was a Friday. But Birk’s timetable is all over the place. It has 6 days, and it shifts when there is a free day. So, that first Friday in school he started with Day 1, then had Day 2 on the Monday, but Day 3 only on Wednesday because Tuesday the 6^th of February was a national holiday (Waitangi Day). So you can imagine we are completely losing track of what day he is on, so we are very happy that Birk’s teacher regularly sends out e-mails to remind us which day the next week is starting on, and when to pack his sport gear!

WFT, MAT, ENG, TPD, PED, TME, CHE

Linus was very happy that he could choose the courses he wanted to take, apart from the mandatory courses English and Math and a Science (where he could choose between Physics and Chemistry and chose the latter). In that first interview at the school, he was asked for his preferences, to which he said ‘doing something active, maybe practical, with your hands’. So he also got Physical Education (PE) and Technology Product Design. And when the dean said, let’s see what else do we have on offer… Food tech? And Linus said: I love cooking! So there we go. There is one more acronym I haven’t yet mentioned, namely WFT (and not WTF!), which we are actually not sure of what it means, but it’s a 20 minutes thing (homeroom) at the start of every school day, where they gather with about 20 students in different years from their House (Linus is in the Mana House, which means Divine Essence) and do… nothing (as Linus said today when I asked what they actually do in those 20 minutes).

The NZ rhythm

One thing I immediately spotted was that lunch was only scheduled at 13.00. That’s 1.5 hour later than they have lunch in Danish schools! But this is happily not an issue for the kids. The school day starts a bit later than in Denmark, at 8.40, and they are done a bit later too – around 15.00. And then they have ‘morning tea’ which is a smaller snack during the morning – in Birk’s timetable this is called ‘brain snack’ where they often also go outside or do a little activity. They both have been trying out some of the school lunches, since the offerings are a bit different than in Denmark. Linus had a ‘hashbrown’ today and Birk has tried a pie with minced meat and a dish with some chicken with rice. One of the snacks you can order in Birk’s school is pineapple!

So, they are off to a good start in school. And plenty more stories to come in the next weeks!