Getting Ready For The Second Week

When I think about going back to school this week, the first thing I think of is that I have to bend down to unlock the door. I'm not very tall, so either the card reader's too low or the shoelace holding my card is too short. We have these funny little ID cards that have our heads peering out of a white background. They're supposed to open the doors, take attendance for the kids, and debit our meal accounts. We found out quickly that they meal part doesn't work, so now our cards are actually two cards pasted together. I'm not sure I know anyone else who has this kind of thing.

For me, the biggest problem, if you can call it that, is that I don't see everyone every day the way I used to. When there were only 2 floors in the main wing and only 2 staircases, I saw pretty much every student multiple times each day and most of the teachers as well. Now, I'm not even sure how many staircases there are, and the classes are on 3 floors in one building and 3 in another, so it's become less certain that I'll see all the people I like.

My only other complaint, and I promise I'll stop here, is getting there. I've been incredibly spoiled. When I ran my own little advertising shop, my office was 1.1 miles from home. The old school was 1.1 miles in the opposite direction, so I haven't had a commute of more than 4 minutes since 1993. Even when I lived in LA, my commute was 3 miles through a beautiful canyon and then 5 miles down Pacific Coast Highway. How do people do this every day for years? It's awful. And I'm only going about 6 miles on reasonable attractive suburban roads. I hope I can get used to it. The nice thing is that I have every important shopping spot on the Main Line right on my way home. I look forward to stimulating my area's economy.

Things I really like, aside from the obvious things like beautiful grounds (a 'duck' pond, sans ducks) and air conditioning, are, in no particular order, free coffee for teachers at Starbucks, bells that don't make me cringe and/or jump 3 feet in the air when I hear them, matching desks in our office (we're now on our second set of desktops, but they still all match each other), which used to be a workout room (and we have a mirror wall to prove it), 2 mezuzas in the classrooms with 2 doors, all kinds of unfinished high tech looking things that promise all sorts of excitement, and of course, the kids, who are just as great in the new place as they were in the old.

I'm sure there will be plenty to report on in the days to come, so stay tuned.