My 11 year old daughter seems to be coping extremely well with day two of Secondary School. She has found some friends and seems to be enjoying having her own text books and school diary. She is even enjoying the novelty of homework, but that clearly won’t last.
She has gone from doing no languages to suddenly doing three:- Latin (my 14 year old advised her tonight in that supportive older brother type way to “drop it the minute you can”), French and Mandarin. “Mandarin” she said “is the language of the future according to my teacher and he said that the top group will get to go to Beijing later on in the year. I am definately going to do extra homework because I so want to go to China, I’m desperate to buy cheap DVD’s and handbags”. I was disappointed that it wasn’t that she was desperate to see The Great Wall of China and the Summer Palace, but hey, whatever it takes….
Music could also be a little difficult – she said she had to fill in a form about her musical talents to date and it went like this:
Recorder: played for a year and gave up
Violin: played for a year and gave up
Piano: played for a year and gave up
She said this morning that she might try some singing lessons next, but my 7 year old said “trust me, singing is really really boring, all you do is sing…repeat, repeat, do not do singing lessons”.
Anyway, the main thing is that she was happy to go back this morning which is all that I can hope for so far.
We had to do everything extra early this morning because my 7 year old HAD to be at school early. “I have a really important job to do today” he informed me, “I am pencil sharpener monitor”. Our departure was slightly delayed a) because he’d fashioned a ridiculous mohican which had to be removed and b)because I had to remake his sandwich…he had made a sandwich out of ham and blueberries and then he had got upset because he remembered that he hated blueberries.
From there I rushed to my new house to meet the builder. I am moving out of my rented house in 3 weeks. There is absolutely no way my new house will be ready. It has been reduced to a pile of rubble. Because I know my builder as a friend and am very close to his wife, I have told him that it won’t be a problem if the house isn’t ready because I will move in with him and his family…guaranteed way to make him work really hard to have it ready.
