Something the Germans do better - mostly

Today we went to Karlotta's Einschulung - her first day of school. And when I say we, I mean, her mother, stepfather, father, stepmother, both sets of grandparents and her godfather. This is a BIG deal.

The day started with us all walking from the house to the church for a brief church service (I'll get to that later). The kids all over the neighborhood are walking to the school with their gigantic backpacks and their Schultuete - a giant paper cone, filled with candy, school supplies and other presents. Karlotta's cone was so heavy, she could hardly carry it. Anyway, after the church service, we walked to the school, where we had a performance from last year's first graders where they sang songs about the alphabet - including one in spanish. Then each child was called up on stage by name to meet their classmates and they went off to their classroom. It was really cute, because they were standing up there, so proud of themselves, but they hadn't actually done anything yet! While the kids were in their classrooms with their new teachers (Karlotta's teacher is named Frau Schoen, which means Mrs. Pretty - how perfect is that!?!? Her first grade teacher is called Mrs. Pretty!!! I love it!), the parents got talked at by the principal. (I have issues with this principal, because last year, he decided that it was okay to teach a class of 7 year olds that when for a woman to have a baby, a man has to...etc. You all know the story as well as I do. The first thing the girls then said to us when we told them that I was pregnant was, "Oh, so then, did you have sex?!?!?!")

Afterwards we went back to the house, where Karlotta opened all her presents and we had a big lunch. She was the star of the day - luckily her older, attention-hogging sister had a regular school day and was not there. And I really found the whole experience to be much better than the way we do it in the States. Nico asked me this morning if I remembered my first school day. Actually, I only remember my first day at Montessori (I think my mom would say it was the whole week), standing outside the school on the stone path, sobbing and begging my mom not to go. But anyway, I just think this ceremony and everything is such a nice transition for them. Then tomorrow they have a "real" school day and then the weekend is here. I love it.

The church service, well, that is just so weird to me. Karlotta goes to a public school, and while the church service was not mandatory, it seemed to me that most of the kids were there. Having grown up in a country where you can't do religious stuff in school, I feel really uncomfortable with this kind of thing.

But otherwise, I think I finally found something that is better here than in the States. Whew - only took me 10 months... oh wait, I forgot about the whole pregnancy/birthing process, that's better here too. I'll write about that next time.