First very rainy day of school...

So everyone here keeps telling me, "oh, yeah when it rains here it is torrential downpour for days." Well I am now experiencing that torrential downpour and it just happened to occur on the first day of school. As I was about to leave this morning for my 20 minute walk, I heard the rumbling of thunder. Of course it had to be beginning right when I was about to leave for school. Luckily, my friend Sally, the other fifth grade teacher, was meeting me to walk up and she had her husband Jeremy drive us to school. He works in Lugano for Pioneer, which is a big agricultural company based here.
We arrived at school early with enough time to figure out the whole morning arrival procedure. Everything here is typically done more last minute than I am used to, but I am slowly getting accustomed to this pattern. Once I found my NINE little darlings we went to our small little classroom, Giardino 1. Yes, it does mean garden. I'm assuming it must have been the first building in the garden, because there is also a Giardino 2, which is where the other 5th grade class is this year. I had a great day getting to know my kids. I knew their summers had most likely been filled with all kinds of fun vacations, mostly to AMERICA and then other kids had traveled to Greece, Malta, Germany...you know the usual. They definitely wowed me, as I expected, with their language abilities. I have students from Denmark, Germany, Swiss-Germany (the German part of Switzerland), Hong Kong and America. One student speaks Italian, French, German, Danish and luckily English. Unlike in SBSD, we started with specials (support classes) right away, but things are a bit confusing because my class is mixed with the other 5th grade class, in addition to the 6th grade class and then of course the Italian sections of 5th and 6th grade. Thus creating 3 new groups for specials, A, B, and C. They get to have each class twice a week!! Good thing they're getting in their PE minutes right? The next change for me, was eating lunch in the lunchroom with my students, very strange...After lunch we finished up some "get to know you activities, and routines" and then got ready to go to Italian class, which I am hoping to attend at some point with my students. So yet again, they are split into 4 NEW groups for Italian.
Finally, at the end of the day at 3:30 (a whole hour more than I am used to) we walked the kids out to pickup. It is almost like "cone duty" at SSF, but not quite the traffic situation that I am used to. After finishing up with school work about 6pm, we headed over to Di Nobili for another scrumptious dinner. We decided to wait a bit before going running, which ended up not being a good choice because the down pour also decided to wait. When we (my friend Martha from Minnesota) and I started our run it was sprinkling, but by the end the thunderstorm was in full effect. We made it back to school (Hadsall) soaking wet, and luckily I got a ride home with Guia, one of the Italian section teachers. Finally home, soaking wet and exhausted from a long day. Off to figure out the laundry situation around here...