If we were still in South Pasadena, today Josh would have started his 4th grade, and he would have seen all his friends...but here in Paris we are still in vacation. School starts officially on September 5th, so we only went there to complete all the paper works. The school is big for a French standard but it's so small compared to Marengo. Josh will be in a French-English 4th grade class (they call it CM1 Adaptation) with other 8 kids coming from all over the world: there are 3 other USA kids, one from Australia, one from UK, a couple from China, then Belgium. None of them speak a word of French so at least he's not going to be left behind. I enrolled him in Theater in English and Climbing. He will have to wait the second term in order to enroll in Science and Math since those are only given in French.
The PiA (Parents in Adaptation) is pretty much as the PTA, they organize a lot of extra activities.
Look at the website video here: http://www.eabjm.org/home/about
Then we met our new family doctor. We picked up a name in the neighborhood, went there, waited 3 minutes, we explained to him that we needed the certification to practice sports. He visited Josh, filled 7 different papers and that was it. 28 euros. I love the French Medical System!
Tomorrow I'll take him to the Fencing School next to us: here there are 46 different Club of Fencing, basically 1-2 in each arrondissment, so it won't take as much time as getting him twice a week in Monrovia. And the terminology is in French, so no cultural or language impact!
So, for all of you who started the school today, have a great year and send us some pictures! We miss you all, a lot.
Hi Isabella,
ReplyDeleteYour reporting from Paris is wonderful!!! It even inspired me to copy to my laptop and view the photos I took this summer. I had not seen them until few days ago. The new school looks like a great experience for Josh. Did I get it right that he will have compulsory Chinese language class? Miss you... Love, Maria
Hi Maria, happy to hear from you. I saw Dimitri's new video...your son is a real talent. Yes, you got it right, Josh will have 1 hour of Chinese a week aside from 5 hours of French + 1 hour of English a day. Since he'll have few chances to talk in English, we decided that at home I'll talk to him in Italian nag Giuseppe will talk to him in English. I wonder what will happen in his brain during the next two months!
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