End of the School Year

It seems like we've lived a million days and walked a million miles since I posted these bright, shiney first-day-of-school shoes.  And here are the last-day-of-school shoes to prove it!

(And yes, we have cleaned them a few times this year!)

It's been a good academic year, with both girls doing well in school and both end-of-year report cards saying they advance to the next grades -- yahoo!  Hard to believe I now have a second grader and a fifth grader!  Surely, I'm not old enough to have such advanced students, am I?! (Don't answer that!)

Zoe had a rocky start, missing Grandpa and missing two of her friends -- both Asian adoptees she's been in school with since kindergarden -- who changed schools.  The day she asked me, in all seriousness, "How often do you think of Grandpa, like 98% of the time, or 99% of the time?," I suddenly understood why my straight-A student couldn't seem to understand anything happening at school! And, yes, I do think that issues of adoption loss were involved, exacerbating these losses.  We found really good help, and the school year just got better and better for Zoe as time passed.  She discovered there were other adoptees in her class and that she could make new friends, and that the passage of time does help salve grief and pain. 

Maya was a little nervous about first grade, having felt a little cocooned in kindergarden, which at her school is in a separate building from the big-kids school.  She worried a bit that she'd experience some of the racial teasing Zoe has experienced, but felt really empowered when faced by a little boy who said she couldn't sit next to him because she was Chinese and she handled it!  I think she grew 3 feet that day!  She loved school, most days telling me at pick-up that "Today was the best day of my life!"  Oh, to have the best day every day!

We were busy with ballet and piano and Chinese School, and are looking forward to a fun and busy summer! We start Monday with the Startalk Chinese language camp and plan to go to Chinese Heritage Camp in July.  We'll get our summer reading in, and spend the rest of the summer on fun, fun, fun!