So, the school got off to a good start. Soon, Linus knew where all the classrooms were and Birk got invited to come home to a new friend. And school definitely brought along some different, new experiences, for example that all teachers are addressed by Ms / Mr and their last name and the use of Google Classroom.

A Kiwi sports injury

The first thing that Linus was training for with Physical Education was an aquathon, which meant he would have to swim 500 meters in the open sea and then run 2.5 km on the beach. So he was swimming and running around four days a week in school to prepare for the aquathon. And how do you run in New Zealand? Barefoot, if you like. You see quite a few Kiwi’s walking around barefoot, and Linus enjoyed running barefoot on the grass. Until they had to run down to the beach, and the asphalt was so hot that his feet actually burned, and he got blisters!! And he wasn’t the only one who got blisters… So, the next day, all parents got an e-mail that we should make sure the kids have proper shoes with them. Linus did have those with him, but he thought they were only for indoor use... So he was limping to school a few days – he did try to take the school bus the next morning but it was full, so it just passed him and he had to walk anyway (for about half an hour)… It also meant that for a few days, he was now allowed to wear socks in his sandals – but only because he got a special permission slip! But he managed to do the aquathon in about 25 minutes – the toughest part was the swimming, he said, which was obviously quite cold…

Mufti-day

Then Linus also had a mufti-day ‘if you bring a gold coin’. A mufti day means that everyone is allowed to have their own clothes on (it turns out that the term mufti is not Maori as I originally thought but actually colonial). But we weren’t really sure what the part about the gold coin meant, and it was only announced the day before. It wasn’t specified anywhere and Linus also didn’t know. In the end, we guessed that he had to bring one of the gold-coloured New Zealand dollar coins, and that was right – it was for charity. Quite a good way to bring some money in, because most kids want to be in their own clothes for a day, so they’ll bring a coin!

Comme ci, comme ça

Birk was also settling well into school, being VERY good at math (the level at the moment is extremely easy compared to Denmark) and getting French for the first time in his life. He got quite a bit of French homework the first time around, to learn some of the things the others had learned the year before, and I, of course, very much enjoyed helping him with this! Ça va? Oui, très bien / comme ci, comme ça. They also got a list of French desserts (crème brûlée) , which I guess was more interesting to learn than basics like the numbers and the months. But when we were at the French crêperie again, Birk did manage to order his next crêpe in French (after I told him how :D).

A ’cricket-sized bag’

Birk also was preparing for camp – the lucky kid got to join the five day camp that happens in the first semester of Year 8. So I went to a parent information meeting where they told us a bit more about what the kids needed and what activities they would do. There was an impressive gear list for packing and then they said that everything should fit in a ‘cricket-sized bag’, which of course did not really tell me anything...

Aloe vera

Another Kiwi problem we encountered was when Søren washed Birk’s shirt and there was a stain that wouldn’t come out. It turned out that some kid had been throwing aloe vera at him – it grows in the courtyard. So Søren had to look up how to get that stain out. Unfortunately, that didn’t work, so he now has to wash and iron Birk’s shirt pretty much every day since he only has two left, and needs a fresh one every day with all the sweating they do.