School in Canada and China

School started for Maya on Sept. 2nd and she fought it all the way. She was not looking forward to going to school. I can imagine how scared she was to go to another new environment and with more strange people. In China she completed grade 4 but here according to her age she is back in grade 4. She was not happy about that especially when she found out that her friend from the orphanage is going to grade 5 but she was born in Dec. On day of school anytime anyone mentioned grade four she loudly protested - grade 5 not grade 4, eventually it sank in that grade four it is. The first day was very hard. She would not let go of us. I took her to the yard where her teacher waited for all her new pupils but I had to stay with her, I wanted to stay with her but the longer I staid the harder it got. By the time we got to the door she was running the other way then another teacher helped get her inside and I turned and left barely containing myself. It was hard on me too to have to leave her after a solid month of being together, knowing she may think I'm leaving her for good. I tried to keep busy during the day so it went by quickly and I could pick her up again. I originally wanted to pick her up for lunches but I didn't think I could get her to go back so I let her stay at school. As well lunches are good for learning English and making friends and she needs some right now.

I let her wear the shoes she came with when we adopted her to make her feel more secure but told her she'd have to wear running shoes from now on. She was not happy with that either, no running shoes and everyday she gets in the car the running shoes come right off.

There were some smiles at first but later tears. I braced myself for the days to come but I'll say right away that it got easier. Perhaps she found out school wasn't so bad or she just resigned herself that just because she is out of China doesn't mean she no longer goes to school.  She seemed to like school there well enough but I don't truly yet know if she was an outcast because she was an orphan of how she was treated. As far as I can see she had friends. She did tell me their schools and classes are a lot bigger as seen in some of these photos I was lucky enough to get from a US orphan foundation in China called, Love Without Boundaries who were wonderful enough to sponsor her education. They also sponsor surgeries and other needs of the orphans of China.

There are more photos but I will keep it for another post. Here are more photos from the rest of the week of school in Canada. It got easier each day. She did manage to bring home some teacher notes, parent letters and homework. She did not mind doing homework with me.  There was a little impatience here and there as I tried to explain things she did not understand but overall she does her homework and packs up her backpack for next day.  These photos are not necessarily going to school but as shown here she did love me still even though I said she had to go to be like all the other little kids and go to school.

Here she is singing some Chinese songs in the evening, maybe dreaming of China, even though it was an orphan life, it was her life and surely she misses it at least to some degree.

This is the backpack she came with when we adopted her so I let her have that too but it is a large one with many compartments and I thought she might need all the slots for schoolbooks etc but that is not so. Most of the supplies are provided at school and after a few days she complained that her backpack was so big and other kids had a small backpack so we exchanged it for the one we brought with us to China that only had one compartment for everything and so that seems to be good for now anyway.

During the day we saw Brandoman, he is such a cutie, just wanna kiss those cheeks.

The first few days she did not eat her food. Anything I gave her was no good but I guess when one gets hungry one eats and now she eats everything. As soon as she gets out of the yard she has to show me that she ate it all so we were both quite proud of that and that she made it the whole week at school without phone calls home. I half expected that school was going to call saying Maya was missing because she ran off trying to go home but I never did and now already a second week is done because tomorrow is already PA Day, yeah.

Maya gets very preoccupied in the morning deciding what jewellery she will wear to school. I told her she does not need any jewellery in school but she will sneak it anyway. Can't imagine she wore it in class in China but maybe only because she now has jewellery now the girl wants to use it.  Today she put on a rosary she found hanging somewhere, I told her that is used for a prayer and granted she is in a Catholic school but she did not need to wear it to school, still it was around her neck when I dropped her off at school. So she has a lot to learn about what's appropriate and when but small steps.

This is the first project that came home from school. Of course we have to keep this forever :)

At night she still reads a Chinese book, mostly the fairy-tales we got her there.  She has other books too but she rarely picks up those. Hopefully when she's done with these two hundred pagers she'll move on to something else. I like to take turns reading so I read in English to her and she is to listen but again because mostly she has no idea what I'm saying overall she gets impatient and will suddenly get out of bed and start doing something else. I gently stop her and guide her back to bed so I end up reading once every three days or so because I don't want her to lose her mother tongue.