At first it was all doom and gloom and blame, blame, blame on why we brought her to this country and she doesn't understand a thing, and all the kids in her class worship the Bieber...but now she's getting into her groove. Not full stride mind you, but there's tentative movement afoot.
First, she's a bit of a celebrity right now being the only Canadian and English speaker to boot. Plus, her English teacher gave her a bit of a plug by telling the entire class to speak to her at recess to practice their English...and they do.
Yesterday, she was doing a career day test at another place. I had asked her teacher about it and Herr Lamb said she should meet at the school. Then E comes to me with an address the day before said test and told me that a different teacher said to meet there. I asked E if all the kids were meeting at school and was she sure that's what the teacher said.
"I don't know, she was speaking in German!" "Well, why didn't you ask?" Then a lot of eye-rolling and it was useless to continue the conversation, so I pulled out my handy (which is cell phone in Germany) and looked up the address. Hmmm, 3 kilometres one way, 36 min according to google maps; not bad. I could get my exercise for the day.
So off we went by 8 am in the cool morning air, a little late since said daughter couldn't roll out of bed until 7:17, then insisted on taking a shower. We had to be there by 8:25 and would already be late, but we walked quickly using my handy as a guide.
Steven was still in Amsterdam, so I was on my own with E. You know when you're trying to navigate your way to a new place and your sidekick is questioning your every move and you just want to scream...yeah, it was one of those journeys.
Finally we get to a bridge that goes over railway tracks except there's no walkway on our side and a sign clearly saying do not cross. I was all for turning back and crossing at the light, but daughter splurged on ahead climbing stairs that went down under the bridge. I followed saying that she was going the wrong way, and sure enough, 10 minutes later, we stop at a metal fence with no crossing the tracks.
Sigh...we walk along the fence until we come to a ramp and up we go and find ourselves on top of the bridge except on the pedestrian side.
More walking. Lord, where is this place?!? The sun had now come out fully and was low in the sky, shining directly into my eyes. I couldn't see squat. We were clearly in the commercial/industrial area of town with factories and big trucks rolling by. A city bus passes us.
Hey, a bus! I yell to Elowyn to pull out her Schokoticket (bus card for kids)! But no, daughter forgot it at home and blamed me of course. So more walking until we came to a busy round-about. Now, there's absolutely no way to cross a round-about safely, which probably means that no one in their right mind walks in that area except ignorant Canadians. We had to walk down the road, then sprint across when the coast was clear.
At this point, I was sweating in my heavy clothes, my feet were hurting and we still had a long way to go, but we finally reached our destination, 15 min late. They all looked at me as if it was my fault, but I gave Elowyn a withering glare and told them the truth which resulted in more glaring from daughter. The teacher said to be back at 2:30 to pick her up. WHAT!?! Whatever happened to traveling together as a class?!? After walking 45 min in no man's land, I had no intention of doing the trip a third and fourth time, so out comes the handy to tell husband that he has to leave work early to pick up Elowyn because she was out in the sticks. Daddy saved the day, and my feet!
Tonight's entertainment centred on a new extra-curricular class. The school admin told Elowyn she would be taking chemistry, so off she went with a gaggle of girls to learn science. Ahh, but she soon found out it was the chemistry of cooking!
She came into a class with girls carefully creating a chocolate concoction. They waved her over and spent the next 10 min gobbling chocolate from their recipe stash and grilling Elowyn on how well she knew Justin Bieber, until the teacher drifted over and saw by their chocolate covered mouths that their recipe might be in trouble.
Now, Elowyn is not a big fan of the Biebs; Steven's careful musical education of Elowyn is by taking her to hear icons like Paul McCartney, Dillon, the Beach Boys, Madonna, Ringo Starr, Leonard Cohen, Stevie Wonder, Rush, Pink Floyd, U2 and the like; he made sure of that. Still, she wanted to fit in so played up the Canadian connection saying she did see him perform, (halftime at the Grey Cup), and no, she doesn't want to marry him. This was met with total disbelief and outright gasps, so she quickly recovered by saying she wanted to go out with Steve Mendis, and the group was duly satisfied and treated her like an old friend.
Baby steps.
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