Our New Community

We had the International Festival at the boys' school yesterday - the first one we've attended. The boys and I had a great time, although Husband was unfortunately trapped at work. This is the big school party of the fall, as the student body represents more than 40 birth countries. I was impressed with too many things to go into detail about all of them; what really hit me the most was the remarkable sense of comfortable community that surrounded the entire event. I haven't been able to spend much time on campus outside of afternoon pick-up, but I was at ease the entire time, and never had that sense of "everyone else knows everyone here and I don't know anyone." (Yes, some part of me hasn't left junior high, I am aware of that.)

I have a stack of photos to share with you, and some random word images as well - images of ...

two soccer games and one football game, all of which ran on their own for three hours with no adult supervision, sometimes combining into two games, expanding and contracting as kids came and went ...

herds of middle (and even high) schoolers, back at their alma mater and, instead of acting cool, chasing each other and acting much like they did as little kids ...

teachers everywhere, not just from our school but from our feeder middle and high schools, volunteering for everything in sight ...

parents tending tables and tables and tables, all of which groaned under the weight of gorgeous food from more than 30 countries, with the crowning glory being the actual, real-life sushi chef at the Japan table ...

three hours of children performing on the outdoor stage - music and dance and even taekwondo ....

two USA tables instead of one - one very red, white and blue and Texas-y, the other pure Louisiana. Because even though the commercials say that Texas is a whole other country, we all know that Louisiana is, too ...

And the pictures:


















And as you can see in the pictures, the weather was more than perfect - we couldn't have asked for a better time.