Back to school!

Our expertise in Andalucian bureaucracy continues to grow, and now with some successes! Monday we finally got word of Eli's acceptance, and Wednesday he started at the Triana Music Conservatory.  It has taken us a while to figure out exactly how it works, but it looks like it is going to be a super music experience.   He was accepted for clarinet (he had to choose between that and piano for audition -- this was a great chance to focus on clarinet, and was equally good because a lot of the people who auditioned for piano were not accepted), but the program is much broader than a focus on one instrument.  Each week he'll have 2h of theory, 2h chorus, and 30 min private clarinet.  Wednesday the  clarinet teacher asked him to audition for the orchestra next week, and if that goes well, he'll add another 2h of orchestra a week.  Everything is between 5-8 p.m., which fits pretty well with our newly adopted Sevillan eating patterns --  desayuno a las 7, merienda late morning (optional), almuerzo a las 2:30, cena a las 8:00-8:30.  So we are a little early on the dinner side, but Eli and I both start melting down by 9.

Hunger strike. Father fighting for the education of his son.

We've been waiting for weeks for Elias to be assigned a school by the Delegación Educativa de Andalucía;  this was frustrating because Eli couldn't enroll in school until assigned by the Delegación, and school started on the 15th!  We, and the local school director, have called repeatedly, and were always told nothing could be done, just wait until they called us.  Finally, Thursday morning we got the call, I zipped across town to the Delegación  to be greeted by a big sign from another frustrated parent, and got the enrollment assignment -- to the wrong school.  They said there was no room at the school we requested, so they put him in the next closest school, which had instruction in Spanish, English, and French (not classes to learn French, but teaching subjects in it).  This would have been an interesting challenge, but even the Directora thought this was silly.  So once more we went to visit the Directora at the IES Vicente Aleixandre, where we expected Eli to be admitted, and she was so fed up with the Delegación that she enrolled Eli on the spot, complaining loudly that yes, there was space in his year, ¿what was the Delegación talking about?    So Friday Eli started his first day in ESO 2°  (Obligatory Secundary Education 2nd level = 8th grade), and had a great time.   He was a little surprised when in math class he and another new kid were each asked to go to the board and work out prime factorization in front of the class (apparently they had learned it earlier in the week), but that was followed by the teacher reviewing addition of whole numbers for the class, which he said he'll never get over.  But he came home happy and apparently automatically cool among all the kids who wear Hollister and California Surf shirts to school.