How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ruth started preschool in November. She is the only native English speaker there.

Most days she is excited to go to school. She learns letters and numbers in both Serbian and English. She has also learned some other words like "majka" (pronounced like the English name Micah, it means "mother")and "tata" (daddy). She now addresses us this way :)

And sometimes she asks us what a word she heard in school means.

Here is a picture of the building her school, called a vrtić (little garden), is in. There is a small playground outside for when warm weather comes.

 

This past week she came home, very happy with her nails polished. She said the teacher had painted them. I thought this was cute, but wondered what might be the repercussions in America if a preschool teacher painted students' nails without parental consent.

All Through The Town

We feel fortunate to have a bus stop near our house. The route goes right by Ruth's pre-school and has a stop a few meters away from it. It also has a stop near one of the main shopping centers we frequent. So if our car's not working well, or we don't feel like driving, or we need to meet up somewhere, the bus is a viable option. The cost is 70 euro cents per adult, children ride free. The girls love to ride the bus, much more than a taxi, sometimes more than our car.

Esther is sitting by herself, but later moves to my lap.

Some of the bus tickets we get.

There are some differences between city buses here and those we've experienced elsewhere. Most of the buses we've ridden in are "hand-me-downs" from a German speaking country. They still have the instructional signs in German. The bus stops only have the schedule for when a bus starts from it's original station, not when it will reach that stop. If no one is waiting at a stop and no one is standing on the bus (to indicate they want to get off), the bus doesn't stop. It seems to ensure that the driver knows you want to get off, you should stand as soon as the bus leaves/passes the preceding stop. Sometimes the bus leaves the starting point early (the stop near our house is the starting point and once I was on a bus that left 10 minutes earlier than the stated time). Sometimes the driver will stop the bus for a personal errand (We have both experienced drivers stopping at a sports betting store to presumable place a wager on a sporting event).