First Day of Detskii Sad (Preschool)

Tuesday 28 January 2014
So we set out in the total darkness (at 8 am), Mom, Dad, E, K, and little A in the stroller, to get to detskii sad.  Waited for a tramvai, but that's rush hour and we had to wait for three to go past us before one had room to get on.  Then navigated the underground passage (down stairs, long tunnel, up stairs) which is the only way for pedestrians to cross the enormously busy thoroughfare nearest us.  Then we walked 20 minutes, and more by guesswork than fact arrived at the detskii sad just after 8:30.  Not to mention each of them had a bag of the spare clothes, extra shoes, socks, etc which every preschool wants, and in Russia even more so.  Oh, and did we mention it was --20 celsius.  Most people don't take preschool children outside in this weather, let alone half hour walk to detsad.  But we had waited a long time for detsad, and we weren't going to let this opportunity go unused.

As you can see, it was actually too dark to take a picture when we got there, but by the time we talked to both teachers and settled both girls, we could take a photo of the rest of us, leaving without E and K.

 This is the last we used the green stroller, because shortly after this, it hit a block of snow/ice it couldn't navigate, and the front wheel snapped clean off.

Here is the whole front of the building.

The building is much deeper than it looks.  From this side you can see what might be 6 classrooms, but there are actually 10 classrooms (not all filled yet), plus a gymnasium, a music room/auditorium, and a swimming pool (wading pool), a kitchen, a nurse's station, the director's office, plus other random rooms we haven't discovered yet. 

Here is the front door sign, which is not really legible, but you can see the number down at the bottom. Like New York, all public schools and preschools have numbers, and that's what everyone calls them (not names): 

This picture is of E and K when Mom came back to pick them up after lunch.

Normally they will stay for nap time, but on the first day, we tried half day.  Didn't work so well.  E said she wanted to stay (just to see what they did later), and K did NOT want to leave that disney princess bag in her cubby (she didn't believe we were coming back…).  P.S. The next day we took it back & she was fine with leaving it.