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School is hard!
April 13, 2008
And she hasn't even started yet. And I'm not even the one going! I spent this weekend gathering up Mia's school supplies off of my list which was roughly translated off of their list which was written in Japanese of course. As if the translation didn't make things difficult, I have absolutely no frame of reference for understanding this list. "Bring indoor shoes, the white ones, in a shoe bag." What does that mean? Had I grown up here, I would have known that all little school children wear the same indoor shoes and some of them have red soles, or blue soles, or pink soles. They wanted her to have the white soles. I think. And a shoe bag is not labeled "shoe bag" at the store-- at least not in anything I can read. So you just have to know that certain sizes and styles of bags must be for carrying shoes. When I toured the school, they tried to show me the contents of another girl's backpack so I had some idea of what I was looking for. Except for the shoes-- she must have been wearing those! Luckily, I have a couple english speaking Japanese friends to answer all my silly questions and they pulled me through. So I think Mia's ready for school this week.
She needs a backpack, a spare set of clothes packed in it's own little bag which will go inside the backpack, a towel WITH A LOOP to hang on her own personal little hook so she can dry her hands after washing them, a thermos with a strap, indoor shoes and a shoe bag to carry them. She got a princess one of course. I didn't even try to tackle the lunch paraphernalia yet since she won't need it until June when she stays at school all day. So I have a few weeks to figure out which bento box and which set of utensils (which incidentally come in their very own carrying case) I should get. There's a separate bag for the cup and another bag for the bento box and possibly another even bigger bag to hold all of it together. I don't know. I'll try to figure it out later. I need a break after this round. The biggest challenge of it all was that all of her things are supposed to be labeled. Why is that so hard you ask? Because her name is supposed to be written in katakana. So I turned to my faithful old pal, Google, and tried to figure out how to write Mia. Luckily for me, it's only two characters. Behold:
I asked my friends and they could read it so apparently I'm literate now! Just don't ask me to write Ellerie. We're going to have to move before it's time for her to start school!
Posted by Kimberly at April 13, 2008 04:42 PM
Comments
How fun! I though finding glue sticks was difficult enough. I can't wait to hear about Mia's first day. She'll do great and so will mom!
Posted by: Erin at April 13, 2008 11:45 PM