Rose seems to be doing fine. I've had trouble sleeping all week and have been fixating on the immediate stuff like what time does school start and where is it? and I am not yet on the other side of everything. We had the first, hey it's all going to be ok day, but we'll see how it goes when the schooling actually hits.

Some good signs:

They made the 6th graders feel very welcome. They had only 6th graders in the building today and did a lot of community building activities. Rose feels solid with her new combination lock. She can find her way to all her classes. She thinks the lunchroom looks fantastic. Pizza every day! (Unfortunately, not gluten-free, but it's the thought).

Contrary to what I was told last spring, Rose will not have to haul her cello back and forth to school. They'll give her one to use there. Hurrah! This means no carrying a cello and backpack five blocks to the bus stop. This means she could actually ride her new bike to school--once we all figure out how to get there.

They fixed her schedule immediately. Because Seattle schools are such a mess, they did not have the schedules up and running before the first day of school. That meant you couldn't check for mistakes. So, after a summer of being nervous about math class and working on math with John, she got put in the wrong (lower) class. I had personally hand delivered the form that put her in math eight, but I kept thinking this was somehow my fault and changing it was going to completely wreck her schedule and her groove. I told the person in charge of schedule changes. She believed me, and Rose's schedule was changed before they even went to visit the classes.

Rose is taking P.E., math, science, language arts/cultural studies, and orchestra. The sixth graders all have lunch together. There are some 340 sixth graders, and they've come from 34 different schools. Even though Rose knows 15 kids, she only has a few of them in her classes. That's ok. She'll make new friends fast.