Edinburgh Weekend

We left St. Andrews in our car, and met up with our students at the nearby rail station. They all made it there in time, which is always a worry for me, and we had plenty of time before our train to Edinburgh arrived. Unfortunately, as the train pulled up, I led the group to the wrong car so we weren’t able to make it to the seats that I had chosen, and in fact we didn't have any seats at all and spent the hour long ride squished against other passengers. I was carrying Leah, and so an older chap gave up his seat to me, though only after she started to swing her booted feet wildly and complain about not sitting down. Once we were sitting I could still barely move, and when she decided she wanted to draw on the Kindle Fire in my backpack, I did panic a bit. I managed to distract her by pointing out enough diggers along the tracks, and then boats in the harbor as we got closer, to keep her occupied.

We arrived in Edinburgh, tumbled out of the train, and regrouped. Emma and I met up with John and David, who were furious at each other for some miscommunication that occurred mid train ride about where they should actually get off, and they were both mad at me for botching the boarding process. I put them in charge of all future train rides from then on, which I though was an excellent tactic but had the unfortunate side effect of causing John to be anxious about our return trip, and to spend the whole weekend talking about how we were going to get on that return train correctly.

We walked to the hotel, which turned out to be a great, trendy little place with dorm style rooms, some of which included in-room ping pong tables, PlayStation and TVs at the foot of the bunk beds. Unfortunately, it was on a really downmarket street called Cowgate, known for its gloominess since it’s well below most of the other streets of Old Town Edinburgh. It’s also known for being a street of rowdy pubs and rowdy pubgoers. In fact, one actually passes through the beer-soaked patio of a huge pub to get to the lobby of our hotel. I picked the hotel because I thought the students would love it...and they did. I hadn’t considered, however, what it would be like to carry an overly tired toddler through a loud beer garden after sunset, past boisterous groups of twentysomethings out on the town for a night. The first night, after we arrived and had a quick dinner at a Nando’s, David took the students to a theater performance. Emma and John wanted to go as well, so I walked with the group to the theater, then left as they found their seats. I walked towards the hotel, and it was pretty quickly evident that I was the only person on the streets who 1) was over 40; 2) was accompanied by someone under 5; and 3) hadn’t been drinking for the last several hours. The nearer I got to the hotel, the worse it became, and of course the harder it was getting to carry Leah. I hadn’t brought a stroller because the wheels would have been no match for the cobblestones, the stairs or the hills in Old Town Edinburgh, but after a 20 minute walk holding almost 30 pounds on my hip, I was getting tired. We entered the Grassmarket area, which is a bit more pedestrian friendly than the area in which we had just passed, and so I put her down and let her walk next to me. Grassmarket is known for its restaurants and pubs, and also for its history as a horse and cattle market, and as a place for public executions by hanging. Here, Leah caught a second wind, and started to jump up on the low stone memorials that list the over 100 Scottish Covenanters that were hanged here in the 1600s. I was a little hesitant to let her do this, but since she was quite content and I wasn’t carrying her any longer, I hated even more to prevent her from doing so. Also, I couldn’t imagine her understanding what I meant if I said, “Sweetie, maybe we shouldn’t jump on a memorial to people who were hanged here, hmmm?”

On Saturday, we had a quick breakfast at a cute little tearoom on the Royal Mile, which is Edinburgh’s high street, called the Deacon’s House. This is in reference to Deacon Brodie, a Jekyll-and-Hyde type well known in Edinburgh history. Inside were murals that told the story of Brodie, but we couldn’t look too closely at these since other customers were sitting in front of each one, digging into a full Scottish breakfast. We were on a schedule, so we just had crepes and porridge and coffee, and headed out quickly to meet our students at Edinburgh Castle. I had intended to set the students up on a tour of the castle, but as we arrived it started to snow sideways, and got pretty miserable. Instead we ushered them to the top of the castle, where there are a few inside exhibits on the Honours of Scotland (Scotland’s crown jewels). We saw a few of the rooms that had been occupied by Mary Queen of Scots, toured some of the prison vaults, and caught part of a demonstration on the use of armour and weapons. This kind of thing always proves interesting because one realizes how incredibly heavy these suits and swords are. I’m not sure I would be able to take more than a few steps forward when wearing one of these…let alone engage in battle in one!

After an hour, we had exhausted all of our indoor options, so we moved to the on-site café for an early lunch. Most of our students were there as well (as were most of the other castle visitors) so regrouping for an afternoon tour of Old and New Town wasn’t an issue. Our afternoon tour guide was an older chap with a number of very interesting stories to tell about the city and the people who lived there, and though I was thoroughly enjoying the tour, I had to leave part-way through. It was seriously bitter and windy at this point, and I felt guilty at making Leah suffer through it since she really couldn’t get anything out of an outrageous story about the time naughty King George IV visited Scotland (a story I later learned was untrue, and this I know because I googled it…). So, I returned to the hotel, and took John with me to fight off any tuffs I encountered in the pub lobby.

David called me in the late afternoon after his students had finished touring the National Portrait Gallery, and we decided to meet back up at a café that was mid-way between the hotel and the museum. It was on a quiet side street and was nearly empty, which was odd because the coffee and scones we ordered were both delicious. We all sat in a circle of comfy chairs, and Leah busied herself with a basket of kids’ books nearby, while Emma recounted the rest of the tour for me. It was dark and blustery outside, and none of us wanted to leave, but the group had a scheduled tour of some of the underground “closes” of Edinburgh so we had to leave our cozy spot. When we were planning the trip, we wanted to give the students an idea of how the narrow closes of Edinburgh were constructed over the years, but it’s difficult to access some of them without being a part of an organized tour. Most of the tours are overly dramatic “ghost tours” that are intended not to be historically accurate, but to feature costumed “jumper-ooters” to scare the bejeezers out of their customers. I opted for a more sedate and established tour of the “Mary King Close” instead, though on the way we did end up waiting for a pedestrian light next to one of these “ghost tour” groups, and their guide, though made up in zombie face paint and dressed in an oily black cloak, seemed quite knowledgeable and reasonable. Of course, as we stood next to him, Leah kept eyeing his zombie face paint and then loudly whispered to me, “That is a sick man!”

Leah and I skipped the tour of the close because she didn’t meet the minimum age requirement, so we went back to the hotel and played with some Jenga blocks for about an hour. When the tour was over, I went to pick up Emma and John for dinner, and left David with the students for a group meal. It was a three-course menu prix-fixe at one of the lovely restaurants on elegant Victoria Street in Old Town, so I thought I would skip it and head to a more casual place with the kids instead. We ended up finding a great café that served venison pies, and homemade mac and cheese for the kids. Though it was past her bedtime, Leah spent most of the evening playing with the little bottles of Coleman’s mustard and HP brown sauce on the table, while Emma and John and I made a list of stupid things we overheard other tourists say in the Edinburgh Castle earlier in the day. I was dreading the walk home since we would have to march down Cowgate to get back, and we all talked about how strange this city is…chock full by day of mums with prams, but the moment the sun goes down they all disappear and the entire place turns into

a city-wide “stag do”.

The weather improved a bit on Sunday, but still wasn’t good enough for us to carry out our planned hike up Arthur’s Seat. Instead, we pushed back our start time and met up at the fabulous Museum of Scotland. We gave our students some free time to wander about in here, since the museum covers pretty much everything about the country from its land mass to its animals to its history to its recent vote for independence. We had lunch at a nearby Pizza Express with the group, and sang “Happy Birthday” to one of our students who was turning 21 (bummer to turn 21 in a country in which the drinking age is 18, right?). Two of the students did decide to climb Arthur’s Seat, but I couldn’t imagine hiking up that with a 2 year old in that kind of wind, so we went for another coffee at the Elephant House Coffee House. This is the café where JK Rowling was supposed to have written some of the Harry Potter series, and as such it is actually more of a tourist destination than a café now (so much so that the menu and signage appears in English and Chinese). Nonetheless, the students were happy to be there, and dutifully pulled out their laptops at the very table where she did some of her writing to finish up some of their work for David’s class later in the week. After we finished our coffee, we took one more stroll up the Royal Mile (poor Leah was so tired of trudging up hills at this point that she was puffing next to me, “So. Much. Tired”), picked up our luggage and headed for the train station.

Storm Gertrude, Inside and Outside

We’re planning to depart this afternoon for a weekend in Edinburgh with our students. I planned to pick the kids up from their schools at 2:00 pm so we could leave for the train station, but they managed to convince me that it would be easier for them to just walk home at lunch. I had prepared notes for their school requesting an early dismissal. However, we had a bit of a rough night here, caused partly from a middle-of-the-night fit by Leah. She hasn’t been sleeping well at all here, and since she’s sharing a room with John, he is suffering. In fact, David and I are wakened most nights not by Leah’s crying, but by John’s bellowing, “LEAH! CUT IT OUT!” She’s not sleeping in a crib here, so that’s part of the problem, but she’s also still having a tough time adjusting. Yesterday I was trying to talk up this train ride to Edinburgh and she said, “Uh, I’d rather take the plane. Can we get back on that plane?” I said, “Well, the train is going to look just like the plane on the inside,” and she responded, “Well, will it take us to our house? Not to this house, but to OUR house?”

Aside from Leah, we were all kept awake by storm “Gertrude,” which is blowing across the UK today. It’s featuring some seriously gusty winds, and for some reason there’s a dryer pipe right in the middle of our house that crashes in the walls anytime the wind blows even a tiny bit. So, overnight, it sounded as if a squirrel was stuck inside the pipe, thrashing all about, and none of us could get any sleep. David was especially perturbed about this, and he woke up this morning vowing to wage war against that pipe. I’m not sure what his plan is, since our house has such a bizarre construction that we can’t even see any of the roof, let alone figure out where the pipe might be and try to get to it. In any case, everyone “woke up” on the wrong side of the bed, and so I told the kids that they didn’t have to go to school at all and could try to get some more sleep this morning instead. They agreed to log on to their school website in the US and download some work that they have missed since we have been gone, and I think that’s probably a better option than a half-day of school here at this point.

The Forth Rail Bridge

As I checked the news sites this morning, I started to realize that this storm might cause our group some travel delays. It seems that the bridge that takes cars from St. Andrews to Edinburgh (the “Firth of Forth” bridge…say that five times fast, and in a Scottish accent!) is closed this morning because of high winds. We will actually be crossing the Forth Rail Bridge next to it instead of the road bridge, but I’m still watching closely to see if our train gets delayed or cancelled. 

Relearning to Drive in the UK

At last, we are settling into a bit of a routine here. Looking back at the last two weeks, I realize that we made this a bit more difficult for ourselves by timing our arrival a week too close to the arrival of our students. Had we given ourselves an extra week to get the kids settled in their schools, and to get Leah used to her nursery school (if that ever actually happens…), I think this would have gone more smoothly. It doesn’t help that we weren’t able to move right in, or that I got a terrible cold, but none of that matters now. It is what it is, and we’ll just chalk it up to a lesson learned if we are ever able to do this again.

Nonetheless, I think we are finally feeling more settled. My day starts at 6:00 am, and I’m not sure what happens in the first ten minutes of it, but by 6:10 am I am conscious and drinking a cup of coffee, so that’s what counts.  I turn on the BBC to catch the weather (I’m so happy to see that the weather presenter called Carol is still around, with her cheerful “here too, we’ll see some spots of brightening…” predictions). Ideally I would then leave the house for a morning run, but it’s still so dark and I have been so sick that this hasn’t happened yet. Some days, I make do with a Jillian Michaels DVD set I brought along (though I can’t really stand her) and other days I just keep drinking coffee until the kids wake up. They get up around 7:30 am, and since they are wearing uniforms they are able to get dressed very quickly. They come down without their ties tied because they are still learning how to do that, but otherwise the uniform comes together with no problem. We eat breakfast together, and though in the first week we were experimenting with some more traditional British options like porridge, we are back to our standby of scrambled eggs and toast. 

John and Leah and I leave the house at 8:30 in the car, and Emma and David leave by foot a few minutes after us. I drop John off at his school at 8:35, and once he gets out of the car Leah realizes that she is going to school as well and so she starts to cry. It’s about a 10 minute drive to her nursery from there, and since she alternates between loud sobs and shouts of “I don’t WANT to go to my new shool!” the whole way, that ten minutes is certainly a lowlight of each day. Fortunately, the teachers there are masters at gathering up kids in full tears and ushering them into some kind of planned activity, so at least I don’t have to navigate the whole peeling-the-child-off-the-leg scenario each morning. As I wave goodbye, she is still always sobbing but is starting to look around at what the other kids are doing, so I’m counting it as a very, very small victory. Of course, it does stress me out and so every morning, in front of all the other parents dropping their children off, I get into the car on the wrong side. They do all know me as the new mum from New York, so I don’t think they find it THAT strange. However, I will know when Leah is truly happy at this new school when I finally manage to get that part of the morning right!

The mini roundabout!

All of this driving each morning is giving me a chance to really observe the rules of the road, and learn a bit more about how one should navigate here. I still find the roundabouts a bit puzzling, though it’s the mini-roundabouts that really cause me trouble. These are nothing more than small white “reflectorized” bumps in the middle of the road, where Americans might place a stop sign. Like all roundabouts,  the general principle of yielding to anyone to your right applies here. Here’s the problem, though: if I am approaching one of these and I intend to go straight, and an oncoming car approaching the roundabout from the opposite direction is signaling that he wants to turn right (in front of me), is he to my right? Should I stop and yield to him? If I do, it feels the same as it would feel in the U.S. if someone stopped in the middle of the road to allow someone to make a left-hand turn in front of them. Another issue here is that, if I do stop to allow someone to make a right in front of me and there is someone to my left waiting to yield to me as I am on their right, then they get held up as well. I actually googled this last night to see if I could figure out what the right approach is, but all I came up with were a series of chat room posts made by British people complaining that no one knows how to deal with these…British or not!

The dreaded double-mini-roundabout!

If this were not bad enough, there is one intersection in St. Andrews that consists of a double mini-roundabout! It’s a main intersection between John’s school and one of the roads that I might take to get to Leah’s nursery school, and the first time I came upon it I was completely confused and had no idea whatsoever to do there. I think the idea is to treat each roundabout as a separate thing, but there’s really not very much space in between to figure this out. It’s compounded by the fact that there’s a lot of traffic coming into town at that time in the morning, and I am trying to leave town. When I enter the double roundabout, I am on the right of everyone coming into town, and so an entire queue of rapidly-moving traffic comes to a halt to make way for me. It’s one thing to proceed through a confusing intersection when you are unsure of what you are doing, and it’s another thing to do it with a large audience! Fortunately, yesterday, I managed to work my way through a nearby neighborhood near John’s school so as to come out just past that intersection, meaning that for the time being I can avoid it until I feel more comfortable.

Castle and Cathedral and Ceilidh

Saturday started slowly with the kids needing to catch up on sleep. Their school starts at 8:45 am here so that does give us an extra hour in the morning, but they are finding it difficult to be in bed by 9:00 pm or 9:30 pm, since to them that still feels like late afternoon. I was still feeling sick, so I spent the morning in my pajamas, drinking tea and complaining about my headache to anyone close enough to listen. Eventually, David took Emma to the grocery store, and I stayed home with Leah and John. I made myself a cup of exceptionally strong PG Tips tea and allowed myself two of the Advil I have been carefully guarding that we brought from the U.S. I managed to take an hour-long nap in six minute increments (sleep deprived parents of Masha the Bear fans will recognize the significance of that figure), and all of that combined to force my headache into retreat.





We met our students at 1:00 pm in town, by the St. Andrews Castle. This, and the Cathedral next door, are the two Historic Scotland properties in St. Andrews, and so we started our visit by purchasing student memberships to all of the Historic Scotland properties for each student. This process took a while, so the kids and I distracted Leah by showing her all the William Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots rubber duckies for sale in the gift shop. After the various memberships were processed, our group proceeded, and we let everyone wander around the grounds on their own. There's not a lot left to the castle, but I think the students were still impressed at the various bottle dungeons and mines/countermines that were dug during various battles. As a group, we haven't really started to discuss the architecture of the various types of castles in Scotland, and I don't really anticipate that we will, unless perhaps the tour guide we meet next week in Edinburgh introduces the concepts of the tower castle. For now, we just wanted to give our students something to do on a Saturday, and to begin to learn their way around the town.

After touring the castle ruins, we walked next door and visited the Cathedral. I find these ruins fascinating because there's enough left there to really see what an enormous facility this once was. The ruins are very well signed and marked, and in previous visits I have had a chance to really study them. This visit, though, that was not to be, and since David had to finish processing the memberships with the students in this gift shop, I spent some time following the kids around the ruins, negotiating with them about what they could and couldn't climb. When the students emerged, we climbed St. Rule's tower, which is a 100 foot tower to the side of the ruins that is still intact, and that affords a great view of the whole town. The climb up is pretty tight, and it's 156 steps up, so Leah was struggling a bit. John, out of an equal sense of obligation and frustration at her pace, picked her up about half-way and carried her up. I was impressed, but once she got to the top, she forgot all about his generosity and started to berate him for keeping her too far away from the guardrails. "John," she hissed, "you are making me angry!" The students got a kick out of this, of course, We spent some time at the top taking in the view, then started the descent. I made the mistake of having John and Leah go first, and it took Leah ages to get down the stairs. John was trying to be helpful by going backwards in front of her to keep her from stumbling, but she found this frustrating and just wanted to be left on her own. So, she would take a step down, then push John away and shout, "Sop it, John!", then flap her hands a bit, then take another step, etc. It was a looong descent, for sure.

We walked a bit more around the sea wall with the students, then sent everyone on their way for a few hours of wandering in small groups. It was about 4:00 pm at that time, so the cafes were stuffed full of families and student groups having their "tea"...a fourth meal here that consists of some kind of hot beverage and an array of pastries. In principal, "afternoon tea" is a fantastic idea especially when the weather is overcast and the sun makes an early retreat, but in practice, it's difficult for a family of five to squeeze into one of the few spots left at the cafes, especially when one of us is getting grouchy and in desperate need of a nap (I won't name names there...). So, we ventured home, making a quick stop at the public library to refresh our book supply.

We made a quick dinner for the kids and set them up with a movie, then David and I walked back into town to meet the students for a group dinner at a local restaurant called Forgan's. This dinner was intended to really kick off the study group, and give the students a chance to get to know each other, but since they are a pretty small group they have gotten to know each other pretty well already. The restaurant turned out to be pretty good, and I had pre-arranged a set three-course menu from which the students could order. Forgan's offers traditional Scottish food with a farm-to-table/modern ingredients/modern recipes twist (but then again, what restaurant in St. Andrews isn't doing that these days?), in a setting that marries Scottish farmhouse with Restoration Hardware. I was digging it, and I think the students liked it as well. Many of them chose the haggis starter, though it was prepared as a kind of a round, fried ball served on a smear of neeps and tatties with a watercress garnish, so I'm not sure they quite understand what haggis actually is yet. Those who tried it liked it, I think. The main was a Scottish salmon served with a barley risotto, a beef bourgignon under a thick blanket of filo dough, or a roasted chicken dish served with thick planks of "chips." "Pudding" options were a sticky toffee pudding, a cheesecake, or ice cream. Forgan's had put the menu together for us, so I intended only to have to choose the wines. However, one of our students is French so I decided to delegate that job to him from now on, and I got to sit back and enjoy the meal.

After the meal, the staff came out and moved some of the tables to the side of the room, then rolled up these tapestries that had been dividing each table into small private dining rooms, and the place turned into a music venue. A band came out and started to warm up a bit, and at 10:30 they started to teach the crowd how to "ceilidh." This is a Scottish dance that looks a little like square-dancing-meets-polka, and in every guide book to Scotland I have ever read, it is suggested that one attends a ceilidh at least once while they are here. I wasn't sure how game the students would be for square dancing, but they surprised me and jumped right up. At one point, they were the only dancers and I think I heard one of the band members remark that their interpretation of the ceilidh dance was perhaps the most "creative" she has seen.

Our students have arrived

So, on top of some difficulty in adjusting over the last few days, David and I are both now sick. We came down with colds over the last few days, likely caused by adjusted sleep patterns, extra stress, exposure to new germs, etc. It’s more of a nuisance than a hindrance at this point, though the timing really is unfortunate. I had planned to take Leah to the St. Andrews aquarium on Friday, but when I woke up with a pounding head and runny nose, and saw that it was going to rain all morning, I opted for a quiet morning in the house instead. None of the kids are showing any symptoms of head colds yet, so I am hoping that I don’t expose them to anything and they can stay well.

Our students arrived on Wednesday and participated in some orientation activities on Thursday, and on Friday they were scheduled to matriculate and choose their courses. David planned to meet each of them during their pre-assigned appointment, so he was gone for most of the day. When he returned, I left Leah with him and ventured to the grocery store to get some drinks and desserts for the students, who were going to have dinner at our house later that evening. We are fortunate that the rental house has an enormous dining room table, so it’s not a problem to host the whole group at once. In 2011, our dining room was so small and we had so many students that when they came over for group dinners we had to assign times for everyone to inhale and exhale to keep anyone from fainting!

The students were able to locate our house, and they arrived in groups around 6pm. John wasn’t home as he had walked home from school with a friend, so in all we had 14 people. We are still a bit short on dishes, plates and glasses here, but fortunately we had takeout from a local noodle shop, so everyone was eating noodles out of a takeout container with chopsticks and it wasn’t an issue. The students seemed to be in good spirits, and if they are experiencing any homesickness or culture shock, I didn’t see it. They talked about their discoveries over the last few days and compared notes about the various halls in which they were living. Some of them are living in halls that provide a food service while others are “self-catered.” I was a bit worried that one of the students who is self-catering seems to be living off a box of cereal he bought upon arrival, but I assume that once he gets hungry enough he will remedy that without much intervention by us. We also talked about some of the travels we were going to do as a group, and shared some travel suggestions from previous students. Each of the students has some funding with which they can propose a small trip on their own or in small groups in the coming weeks, which we hope will give them the incentive to venture a bit further out, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they propose.

One Step Backward...

So, we have inevitably hit a bit of a rough patch over the last day. The excitement of being back and trying so many new things is slowly wearing off, and I think everyone is starting to realize that we are going to be here for a really, really long time. We are still not fully adjusted to the five hour time change and we are struggling to adapt to the reduced number of hours of sunlight (sunrise is 8:30 am, and sunset is about 4:15pm). We’re still finding our way around the rental house, cursing the light switch locations and the heating system, neither of which is quite right. And we are trying to establish a routine for everyone, but it has been a struggle.

All three kids are struggling a bit with the idea of school here. Emma is really missing her friends, and has started to suggest that the idea of home schooling might be a good one. She managed to weasel out of taking any of the “prelims” over the next week, but she’s still unhappy at school. She doesn’t like the uniform, and she is very aware of all that she is missing at home right now, as her friends are preparing for a big dance this weekend, and spending many hours at practice for the spring musical...an activity in which she would otherwise be involved. While she’s enjoying her classes, she is concerned that she is covering different things and therefore missing quite a bit back home. I’m thankful that the small group of friends with which the head teacher set her up in the first few days has stuck with her, and I keep reminding her to be kind to them and get to know them, as I think having that group of girls around her might soften the otherwise hard edges of being the new kid.

John in his uniform on the way home from school

John is faring a bit better. He’s negotiating the friend situation as well, though he is benefitting from having a few of the same kids in his class that he knew in 2011. He’s sorting through the various social groups and trying to find his place. He did tell me the other day about an incident with one of the school “tuffs,” in which John was left standing alone with this kid and the kid whispered a series of threats to John. John didn’t understand anything the kid was saying, of course, but when some of his friends standing nearby overheard, they stepped in to shut the kid up. John didn’t seem too worried about it, and so I’m assuming it’s just a sizing-each-other up situation, like dogs at a dog park, etc.

My poor little Leah, on the other hand, is really struggling. She’s not terribly fond of her little school at all, and when we turn into the drive that leads to the farm, her bottom lip comes out and her eyes fill with tears. When we arrived yesterday it was morning snack time, and I was hoping that would ease the transition. It wasn’t to be, however: when the teacher informed Leah that the class was eating “beans on toast,” Leah replied, “Why?” I tried not to smile. After snack (Leah did accept the offer of toast, but passed on the beans), the kids gathered at the sink to brush their teeth (another Scottish thing, apparently). The teacher asked Leah to choose a toothbrush by selecting one of several symbols that was painted onto a large box of brushes. She pointed to a beach ball symbol, and the teacher said, “Well done, then, Leah, you will have the football!” I can imagine that the daily tooth brush activity is going to cause a bit of confusion for Leah going forward after that. I ducked out while they brushed their teeth, and when I returned after lunch the teacher reported that Leah had only cried for about 30 minutes after I left. This morning, she was in full tears as we walked in, and kept asking me if I could stay. I had to turn her over to the teacher’s arms, and Leah was actually squirming and wailing as I left….which is always a killer and puts a real damper on the rest of the day, no matter what the after-school report turns out to be.

Leah is the one on the right in the pink flowered suit with the green hat. I'm not sure who is holding her hand here, though I greatly appreciate it. Likely some kid called Callum or Gregor, but whomever it is I will find out and thank him properly, as she's looking a bit overwhelmed here.

I know from previous experience that the first few weeks are hard, and that we are all tested and tried in different ways. I’m telling myself that this morning, over and over again, in the hopes that these first few hard days will pass quickly!