Getting themselves some edumication

So we're no longer on the lam from the long arm of the law. No more sitting up night after night waiting for that knock from the truancy SWAT team (do SWAT teams knock? but i digress...). The kids are officially back in school.

As with everything our family attempts, we decided to make it as challenging as humanly possible. Go to one of the five adorable local schools to which we could walk or, if we're running late, bike? Nah, that's for pansies who take the obvious route. We're interesting; we're thoughtfully inefficient. So it's off to the international school in Hilversum each morning for us.

It's been about an hour's commute in the morning, but only because I'm a complete maniac about missing the first train and make us bike to the station so early that we end up sitting on the platform for almost 30 minutes before dawn breaks (keep in mind that dawn cracks at about 8:15 these days). I'm rethinking that strategy after this morning's 25kph winds. So we bike to the station, take a train downtown, switch to a second train, and then walk about 15 minutes (at 4-year-old legs' pace) to the two schools. In terms of satisfying our complication quotient, we were pleased to discover that the kids would be in two different buildings a few blocks apart and that the closer building doesn't open until well after the one further away, ensuring that aforementioned 4-year-old legs are dragged an extra six blocks or so before they can fold into semi-exhaustion on his little carpet square in his classroom. I have a feeling that his teacher will be wondering what we're doing to this kid to make him pass out over his apricots at snack time.

Despite the vicissitudes of the commute, the kids are both ecstatic to be in classrooms again. Although she put on a show of complaining about having homework, Ais buckled down and completed almost two days' worth of it last night. Dylan was uncharacteristically stream-of-consciousness chatty after being back in a classroom, being particularly impressed with the dinosaurs and the kitchen area with faux dishwasher. This school is so well organized and geared toward expat families' needs that the crazy mornings are a very small price to pay to meet kids and parents who are in a similar situation.

The weirdest part was taking the train back home this morning after dropping them off. I had a strong pang of, "Holy moly, my children are in one city in a foreign country, and I'm going to another... what am I thinking?" But then there was that guilty sense of relief that I now have a few daylight, weekday hours in which to get stuff done for the first time in months. Of course, rather than grocery shopping or revising my CV, here I am...