The First Day At School

Today was Miss M’s first day at school – a proper “big” school with a primary section for kids aged up to 11.

If we lived in Australia in my home state of Queensland, this day wouldn’t happen for another 18 months. So it really is a big day for a very little girl. A baby, really, who hasn’t yet turned four (and who isn’t really a morning person at all).

Our best attempt at a happy “ready for the first day of school” photo this morning.

To make it an even bigger deal, it’s a French school, with all the classes conducted in French.

Miss M and I talked about her new French school a lot. Before today she had repeatedly assured me she can already speak French. “Zing zangabat tringle kinoa,” she said, proudly displaying her grasp of what she thinks is French but is actually absolute gibberish.

So why the French school? Even French parents have asked me this question. And when I tell them that it’s one of the cheapest non-local education options in town, they point out that the German school is also cheap in comparison to the big-name international schools.

However, having a bit of schoolgirl German has not been much use to me so far. In fact, if I’d stuck to English instead of attempting to speak a bit of German I would never have had that agonisingly embarrassing experience in Hamburg of asking a cute young waiter to please bring me the “rectum”. I’d mis-remembered the German word for bill (rechnung). The poor guy fled and sent over the stern elderly manager to deal with me, who was sitting there with a burning face thinking “gee the word for bill sounds a lot like … rectum”. My German friend took great delight in telling me later that the German rektum sound exactly like its English equivalent.

I figure more people speak French globally than German. And although rectum is the same word in French as it is in English, the French word for “the bill” is nothing like rectum. So there’s one language trap she can avoid later in life.

Wrestling with a new language is not going to be easy for any of us. I spent most of today typing bits and pieces of the school liasion book into Google Translate. (Jumping ropes and marbles are allowed, toys and jewelery are not.)

Darling Man and I understood not a word of the welcome to the new school year speech, including the instruction to sign up to activities.

The first day of school dropoff was also a bit daunting for the usually fearless Miss M. I think it was all the parents hampering her access to “her kids” and the play equipment. I was put off by the stylishness of the other parents. Me in yesterday’s shorts (fastened with one of Miss M’s hairbands because I still haven’t managed to explain maternity pants to my tailor), a baggy shirt and helmet hair, feeling incredibly daggy next to the French and Vietnamese mothers with their high heels, makeup and jewelery.

And — oh God — I’ll have to face this super-stylishness every day at 7.30am, which is so much earlier than our usual wakeup time.

We’re going to give this French experiment six months to see how we all cope with it. It’s an opportunity that wouldn’t be available if we lived in Australia. It will set Miss M on the path to being trilingual, somewhat of a rare trait in Australians.

The verdict after the first day was that Miss M wants to go back to her old school, the lovely daycare place she’s been attending for the past year. We forgot to give her a snack and hunger and overtiredness turned her into a bit of an after-school monster. But her teacher told us she was “perfect” this morning, already using a few French words. I think we’re off to a good, albeit, shaky start.

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By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.