Yokohama International School
Though this post is a few weeks late, the kids have now started at Yokohama International School! We are now multiple weeks into the school year and the kids are loving it so far.
The First Day
Miles and Calvin were introduced to their teachers prior to the first day, so neither went in completely blind. Miles agreed to wear a nice polo while Calvin just wore whatever would keep him from losing his mind; otherwise known as a mesh shirt and mesh shorts. Both had a good attitude about our slightly-longer-than-half-mile walk to school.
To get to school, you have to ascend an epic mountain where a dragon makes you answer a riddle in order to gain access to the top. Luckily, the Japanese government realized this was a huge inconvenience, so they built a set of escalators that takes you half-way to the top. This is the route we typically take. One day though...we're coming for that dragon and his riddles.
On the way home, we tend to skip the escalator and instead go down a set of stairs that is roughly 30x faster than escalators. The added bonus of these stairs is that it drops you out at a pet store where we all get to look at cute little puppies for a few seconds before continuing our walk home.
The First weeks
With the walk to school comes various adventures and complications. For instance, we've now had our first walk to school during a typhoon!
Utilizing bribes of treats if they walk in the rain with a good attitude, I've been able to mitigate any tears and freakouts about getting wet socks.
We’ve also made friends with some other kids who live in our building so sometimes we all walk to school together.
Now that we're in the groove, its become a normal thing to walk 20 minutes to school each day. It's easier and easier to get the kids out the door and Miles is already dying to do the trip on his own (lots of kids walk to and from school at his age without supervision). Typically, as we're walking, Miles will hang back about 20-30 feet so that he can walk "alone". This is the kid who would cry if I dropped him off ten feet from the front door of his elementary school in Tennessee. Japan….it changes you.
