Nick was originally scheduled to start language classes on Tuesday, September 6th–the day after labor day. That would have been fine and dandy if we didn’t have the kid with us, but we did, and school just so happened to start on Monday, August 29th. Given how nervous she was about going to an American public school (remember, she’s been at all IB International schools up to this point so THIS feels very foreign), we wanted her start to be as normal as possible, meaning, we were determined to have her there on day one.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “No biggie. Just arrive a little early and have Nick hang out for a week.” Alas, like most things in the Foreign Service, it’s never quite that simple. In this case, Nia starting school depended on two other things happening beforehand. The first prerequisite was that we needed to be in our permanent housing, which we weren’t allowed to move into until the day before Nick started class. The second was that we needed a signed lease from our apartment to officially register her, which was why simply staying in a hotel for a week wouldn’t cut it.
It became obvious that if we were going to get Nia registered and in school by August 29th, we’d need to get creative. After some in-depth online digging, we were thrilled to discover that we could move into our permanent housing early if Nick found a class (or classes) to take that covered all five days of that week.
So that became goal one: Find Nick a class for the week of August 29th that had enough relevance to his upcoming job that we’d get it approved by his training officer. Thankfully, the scheduling Gods were on our side and he was accepted into a one week Central Asian Area Studies class. With his course acceptance confirmation, we got our move-in date officially bumped up to Sunday, August 28th. It was progress, but we weren’t in the clear yet…
We weren’t comfortable with the idea of having Nia simply show up at school on the first day without being registered, so we opted to get a hotel for the five nights prior (conveniently next door to the building we’d be moving into) which would enable us to harass the school administration in person AND attend the open house.
After a long day of flying from Oregon, we landed in DC at dinnertime on Tuesday the 27th and spent the night figuring out how to cram our eight suitcases into our cozy one-bedroom at the Residence Inn. When Wednesday dawned, we promptly set out to visit the school, determined to get Nia Marisa Novak on a 5th grade class roster (even if only informally).
We made the 20 minute walk to school, rang the main office (remember the good old days when you could just walk into a school?), and were buzzed in. Once inside, we asked for Claudia, a women I’d previously communicated with over phone and email. Thankfully she was in the office that day and we went about introducing ourselves. Once reconnected, we explained our complicated housing situation to her, and asked if there was anything we could produce in lieu of a lease to get Nia registered. She thought about it briefly, and, to our delight, said that she could accept a copy of our official orders plus the confirmation email we’d received that assigned our permanent apartment. Almost there…
We arrived at the school at 4 PM on Thursday for the Open House, praying to God that we were on an official list and that we’d know who her teacher was. To our delight, Claudia had made it happen in less than 24 hours, meaning Nia got the satisfaction of knowing both her classroom and teacher. Her ear-to-ear smile alone was worth all the extra effort that we’d had to go through.
