\tDuring her extra-long-super-extended summer Kaitlyn admitted to a couple of fears about starting a new school… in a new country.<\/p>\n
\tFirst, she said she was afraid she wouldn\u0092t make friends. This is a child who will talk to anyone. And does. She is only shy around adults. And even then it\u0092s temporary. I do think that making friends is harder than she\u0092d probably hoped it would be. Saturday, the PTO held an annual ice cream party on the playground. Kaitlyn was so worked up about going. So excited about showing off her new school to Mom and Dad. And once we got there, she clung to us. Said kids were being mean. Said she didn\u0092t have any friends. I don\u0092t know any of her classmates. For all I know, she really was the only kid from her class who was there. Still, I imagine that making new friends isn\u0092t going to be as difficult as she feared. Or as she tried making it out to be Saturday. Give it time. I mean, she still can\u0092t tell me the names of the children who sit next to her in class. It will take time.<\/p>\n
\tSecond, she was terrified of the lunches. Everyone had told her that the lunches would be gross. Horrible. Especially in comparison to what she\u0092d become used to. Think about it: she used to eat four course meals served to her at the table. It\u0092s been a long time since I\u0092ve eaten a public school lunch but I\u0092m pretty sure I can imagine what it\u0092s like: a long line to get a meal that\u0092s in a little tin like you get on an airplane and about as good. <\/p>\n
\tHer first day, I packed Kaitlyn\u0092s lunch. Mac and cheese. Tomatoes. Yogurt drink. Sugar cookies and a cute little note. At the bus stop, an older boy said \u0093Are you crazy? It\u0092s chicken nugget day!\u0094 (Far cry from what her fellow students could have said to her last year. \u0093Are you crazy? It\u0092s roasted veal stew day!\u0094) When she got home that day, I was not thrilled to see she hadn\u0092t touched her mac and cheese. She\u0092d been too nervous to eat breakfast. How did she not crumble into a hungry mass of tears by the afternoon? After a while, I spotted some weird stains on her shirt. Didn\u0092t look like paint. Dark red, but not blood. That? Oh, that\u0092s barbeque sauce. From the chicken nuggets. Kaitlyn had decided to buy her lunch that day. And supplement it with the tomatoes and yogurt she\u0092d brought. She bought her lunch the next day (pizza. She didn\u0092t notice it was whole wheat) and today (ravioli with meat sauce). I asked her if the food is good and she said it certainly is and that it must be because her school has hired French chefs to cook American food. I don\u0092t know if she really likes the food, or if she just likes using her little plastic debit card to pay for it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During her extra-long-super-extended summer Kaitlyn admitted to a couple of fears about starting a new school… in a new country. First, she said she was afraid she wouldn\u0092t make friends. This is a child who will talk to anyone. And does. She is only shy around adults. And even then it\u0092s temporary. I do think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaitlyn-marsue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}