Today marks the first day at the new school for my older child. This is probably one of the biggest practical changes for relocating families. After all I continue in the same company working more or less in the same business context and as an adult (really, am I?) I can work consciously to adapt to the new culture. But for my son it is a new country, new food, new language, new school, new friends, new teachers, new practicalities and all of that pouring over him on the first day. Then again kids possess this amazing ability to adapt into new settings and as a sponge to suck in all new influences.
With hindsight it proved to be a quite an excellent decision to have my son enroll into English speaking day care and later on to pre-school. So the language barrier will be so much lower to begin with, even if he was participating in a Finnish speaking school just before migrating over. But then again up until now there has always been either other kids or some teachers who have been able to assist him in Finnish when necessary.
Even if he doesn't admit it or even realize it himself, he is in for a treat of a lifetime. It will not only be English that he will be engulfed by. Him attending Canadian International School means that he will learn the basics of French and in addition he will have his first Mandarin lesson starting on Wednesday. Furthermore in the school there are kids representing almost 70 different nationalities currently. So it is going to be truly international learning experience to prepare him to be a real global citizen.
My little boy looked so brave albeit clearly anxious standing there in his brand new official red Physical Education uniform and wearing a Spider-Man backpack in the school yard this morning. Uniform wasn't at all the only thing that we needed to stock up for the new school. There are all kinds of fees attached: enrollment fee, confirmation fee, semester fee, facility fee... Coming from Finland the whole conception of privately run schools is quite foreign. They are clearly aiming to run a profitable business.
On a final note I went with my son to the school for an orientation visit last week Thursday. They mentioned that they will be assessing my son's performance in English over the course of next couple of weeks to determine whether he would need Extra English Lessons (for additional fee of course). As we were quickly visiting the ELL class in session, I learned from the teacher that the kids in there were just learning to tell stories using the F-words! Apparently she meant words like Fox, Fire, Five, Fix and so forth.
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