When the kids are sick

As I've told you in previous posts my kids go to a private school. It's a rather strict and tough school so if a kid miss one day of school he/she has to make up for that the next day or during weekend. They have homework just about every day anyway so if you add a few days away from school on top of that the kids would be doing homework all weekend.

I'm glad my kids don't have many sick days because having one at home and one in school makes life rather complicated for me. We live over 15 km away from school (I'm sorry, I don't know how much that is in miles. Somebody help me, please!), in another town, and there are no school buses so going to school isn't easy. So far, they have been able to get a ride with another kid from school in the mornings but I'm not sure they will be able to take them this year as well. My kids start school at 8 AM so we leave the house at 7.20.

They have classes between 8 AM - noon, and then there's a lunch break until 2.30 PM. Since we live in another town my kids don't go home for lunch. They eat in the lunch room at school and afterwards they play on the school yard until it's time to go back to class. They finish school at 4.14 PM.

I leave for school around 3 PM because I don't have a car (or a drivers license) so I have to go by shared taxi. I'll write about that in another post, it's something very Moroccan. *lol* It usually takes me about 50 minutes to get to school, so while I'm waiting for the kids to come down the stairs I talk to my friends and try to catch up with everyone. There's a LOT of talking going on. Moroccans LOVE to talk and to gossip and since I'm a foreigner I know I'm one of their favorite subjects. I don't mind really. If they have nothing better to talk about, then go ahead!

Once my kids leave school we have to walk down to the taxi stop. It usually takes us about 20 minutes. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the day, because we talk and laugh a lot and they tell me about their day at school. If we're lucky we're home by 5.10 and if we're not it's almost 6 PM before we get into our slippers at home.

Living where we live and having the kids in the only Spanish school in the area is hard when one of the kids is sick and can't go out. I can't really leave one of them at home because I'm away for about 2 hours or more and I don't want my kids to be alone for so long. Anything could happen to them. So I just say a prayer and have to take my sick child with me to school (in taxi and walking both ways) OR call a friend so she can bring me the one who's in school. Sometimes I've had to have them both at home in spite of only one of them being sick, because I couldn't find anyone who could drive my other son home. That's life, when you don't have a car....