Back to School Assembly, news on Hil, and a talk with Kit

Principal Ballard only decided TODAY to have his huge back-to-school assembly, going over the rules we've heard about 60 billion times, going over schedules, class assignments, activities, and making introductions. He trotted out Antoinette as the school's first-ever foreign exchange student. What I found out was, one of the eighth graders is at Antoinette's school in France for a semester, the same time as she's here. So I'm wondering if such a program would be available by the time I got to eighth grade, and would I be interested.

Hilary returned today, but she says she's only here for a couple weeks until her paperwork is finalized. She'll be living in California with her dad for the time being, as her parents have joint custody. She really is having a tough time dealing with the divorce. I remember when my parents split up, it was hard at first, but like I told Hilary, it does eventually get easier.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the office helping Kit with her article for the back-to-school issue. I also directed her to Maura's blog post about becoming Ruthie Smithens, her great-grandmother's best friend in 1934. "Can you time-travel like her?" I asked.

"Lindsey pretended to be Ruthie once when we were in my dad's attic playing," Kit told me. "Time-travel isn't that hard. You just put on a costume and bam, you're in a different place and time. I love it." Then she asked, "You know who my great-grandma was, right?"

"How could I forget?" I replied. "There was a movie and 6 books about her, I want to read them but I haven't had the time. She sounds like she was amazing." Then I asked her what she was writing about.

"The ways school is alike and different in my great-grandma's time and now."

"Sounds like it's gonna be real interesting," I said.

"You'd be surprised," she said, "not much has changed in 75 years. We have computers and stuff now, but a lot of things are exactly the same."

"There weren't French exchange students in her day, were there?"

Kit laughed. "Heck no," she replied, "but there were wanderers called hoboes..." She began telling me this story she knew (that was in the book & movie) about her great-grandma's hobo friend named Will.

"So, that's kind of like what's going on with Antoinette now," I wondered.

"You might wanna cut her some slack. She is in a different country, away from her family and her friends."

I had to admit I never thought of it that way. Count on your friends to show you things you never realized.