First Day at Madras

Emma and John had a full day of school on Friday, and were up early to assemble the various pieces of their school uniform. The Madras handbook says the uniform consists of black skirt or trousers (NOT called “pants” here, as I have learned…), a white collared shirt, a navy and white striped tie, a black jumper (their word for sweater), and a black blazer with the Madras College emblem on the chest. Around town, we have seen a very liberal interpretation of this uniform but to be safe I insisted that we play by the rules at first and follow the uniform policy as written. If the kids realize that some unwritten version of this uniform policy is actually practiced, then we will adjust. But for now, it’s full-on British prep school couture in this house!

Emma in her Madras College uniform

Emma’s school is just a five minute walk away, and very easy to find, so David accompanied her while I bundled Leah up in the stroller and walked with John to his school, which is about 20 minutes away. He was rehearsing what he would say to the registrar when he arrived, and kept instructing me to peel off when we got close to the school and he gave the signal. He said he planned to find Scott, his new rugby mate, as soon as possible, and go from there. As we walked, we started to fall in line with a number of other kids dressed in some version of the Madras assemblage, and he started to look a little worried. As we turned the corner to the school, he gave the signal and I let him go off on his own, with a parting reminder that I would be at this very spot at 3:20pm when school let out for the day.

Leah and I walked back home (I was reminded that St. Andrews is very, VERY hilly, and that cobblestone streets and plastic stroller wheels aren’t compatible) and got in the car for a 10:00 am appointment at her nursery school. We had planned to do a few “settling” sessions before she begins full-time next week, and I thought I would start one today. Her school is about a ten minute drive out of town, up in the hills on Kinaldy Farm. I packaged her up in the car, noting her surprise that I was sitting on the other side of the car, and drove off. As I left St. Andrews I noticed that there was a substantial bit of snow on the roads at the higher elevations, and this worked in my favor because it really slowed the other drivers down. I had no trouble with driving on the snow, but the whole driving-on-the-left-with-no-shoulder-of-which-to-speak thing was still taking some getting used to. I managed to get the satnav in the rental car to show a picture of where this farm was (we still can’t convince it to actually give us directions) and felt confident that I was going the right way when I ended up on a small, unpaved farm road because a friend of ours who had been to St. Andrews before, and who had sent his child to this nursery as well, had alerted me to this. It turns out that Leah’s nursery is really, actually, for sure on a working farm. I parked the car along the road and searched through the windows of the various barns for some kind of brightly colored plastic toys that might point the way to a preschool. I wasn’t quite sure I was in the right place, as I was just seeing animals, or various piles of stacked agricultural plastic pails, and then Gillian the nursery owner popped her head out of a small wooden door and ushered us in.

I didn't get a shot of Leah at her nursery, so took this one as we walked along the Lade Braes to get home for lunch.

Leah is going to be in a class with the older kids (2 ½ to about 4), which takes up the whole second floor of one of the barns. It’s a big room, and full of various play stations like any preschool, but with wooden grates placed over the windows that are overlooking the barn courtyard outside. (That courtyard turned out to be a big play area, but I was unable to see it under all the snow.) We had arrived during story time, which turned out to be ideal because it gave Leah some time to explore the space without being surrounded by kids. Leah is taking all of this change in quite well, but she is still a bit off-schedule and a bit unsure of what the heck is going on here, so I assumed that flooding her with Scottish three-year-olds upon arrival wasn’t going to go well. As the teacher wrapped up her story, she started to get the kids sorted for going outside, and a few of them made their way over to Leah to check her out. Leah has quickly found a naked babydoll to hold, and one little girl came over to tell Leah that there was also a baby blanket to be had somewhere in the pile. She informed us that she was Ruby, and that she liked to play dolls too but that she had to put on her wellies just now and would be right back. The other kids were peering at Leah through some cutouts in the play station, and Leah found this intriguing enough to follow them outside. We spent about twenty minutes walking around the snowy courtyard, trying out the various ride-on toys and introducing Leah to all of the teachers, then Leah decided she had had enough and announced that she was going home. She tromped off towards the gate and I followed her, deciding that I shouldn’t rush things. I told the head teacher we would be back on Monday for a second day of settling, and then loaded Leah back in the car and drove off down the road.

Leah fell asleep in the car on the way down the hill, which was too bad because it is an incredibly beautiful drive. Though it was covered in snow, I could still see the various farm plots, separated by those ubiquitous stacked-stone walls, with the town of St. Andrews lying at the edge, and the blue, blue ocean spread out just beyond. It was another gorgeously sunny day, and if there hadn’t been so much snow, and there had been some kind of shoulder, I would have pulled over to take a picture. Driving through the countryside is one of my favorite things to do in Scotland, because it’s so peaceful and calm. It’s unlike America in that there are no billboards or roadside drive-in restaurants or drugstore chains…just small stone houses and taverns built right up against the road. In the horizon is the ocean, or when you get inland, green hills full of sheep. Though it’s January now and the days are short and can get a bit gray, I know that in a few weeks this drive to Leah’s school will get even lovelier as the grass gets greener and the snowdrops and winter aconite starts to bloom.

When we got home, Leah said she was ready for “cereal and more nap” so I fed her and put her to bed. David was holed up in the other room, trying to finish a paper that was due today, so I had a chance to try to get some more of the dust and grime off the kitchen floor and wash the windows (no comments, please…they were REALLY bad!). At 3, I woke her up for another walk to John’s school. Though she was a bit grouchy at the idea, I mentioned to her the ducks that we had seen on the morning walk down the Lade Braes and the idea of seeing them again proved interesting enough to get her to agree to sit in the stroller (the digestive covered with Nutella might have helped too…). We arrived at the school and waited for a few minutes before we saw John headed towards us with two friends, one of whom had hair so red that I really do think it must have been dyed as that color is just not possible without chemicals. He said he wanted to walk home with these guys, and I was hesitant as I couldn’t imagine he knew where we lived. I wanted to write down our address and my phone number for him, but he gave me the wide-eyed warning that always means, “Mom, back off…you’re embarrassing me!” so I let him go. Leah and I walked home, and I ran through the various scenarios in my mind about how I was going to find him again once he got desperately lost.

When we got home, Emma was there and telling David about her school. She had managed quite well, having stuck by Alana’s side most of the day. She said the maths class was frightfully easy, but the English class was confusing as they were working on poetry she hadn’t read. She had some trouble finding friends in history, but said her French class went well because they seem to be doing things Emma’s class did in eighth grade at home. For lunch, she walked into town with Alana and few of her friends, and had gathered information from them about how girls actually dress. She was snapchatting them as she talked to us, which I took to be another good sign. She did say that many of the kids were asking her about America, and about why she was here. When she told them that her dad was here to teach a class in philosophy, one of the boys remarked, “oh, I have always been terrible at science.” Emma took that as a sign that she shouldn’t worry too much about the curriculum here.

After about an hour of talking with Emma, I started to really worry about John since it had been dark outside for a while. I sent David off to find him, mentioning that I remembered Scott saying he also lived on the Lade Braes but near the bus stop. The only bus stop I remember seeing anywhere near the Lade Braes was near the house we rented in 2011, about a 20 minute walk the other way out of town, so I told him to head in that direction in search of John. He did find him eventually, at that end of the Lade Braes, walking with the redhead who turned out to be the son of Emma and John’s French teacher. Scott had apparently peeled off when his mother started to text frantically about his whereabouts, and so John followed this other boy home and explained to the French teacher where he lived. The teacher insisted that her son walk John home, so even if David hadn’t come upon them, I think he would have found his way home. In the grand scheme of worrying-inducing things coming from John, this was a small one, but still…I’m sure I do have one more gray hair on my head as a result!

John in his Madras College uniform

John said his day had gone well too, and that the school has assigned Scott to be his buddy. That helped him to find his classes, and to find his way at lunch. Both boys bought some lunch from a food truck that pulls up outside, and John said he was a bit confused by the menu so just pointed to chips and a soda for lunch. The guy selling the food told John that he had a cool accent, and high-fived him when John told him he was from New York (see, I said we get a lot of mileage out of that fact here!). John also said that he had seen a number of kids in his class sitting outside at lunch smoking e-cigarettes, which he found disturbing. He assured me, though, that he had stayed far away. Other than that, though, I didn’t get too much more information from him about what he had done in his classes, but that’s typical so I didn’t press it.