Back to School

Here’s the primer on back to school. We did a lot of corresponding with Austrian schools before we got to Innsbruck, thankfully with the gracious help of one of Justin’s colleagues at the university here. By the time we arrived, we had a rough game plan.

We were able to find Justin’s building and poked around long enough to find the administrative assistant for the department and get a tour. There are two photos below of Justin’s school. The building is one of the historic buildings in the old town consisting of two wings that include the department of Christian philosophy, theology, religious studies and perhaps a few more that I am forgetting. The wings are connected by a beautiful cathedral, which, as it turns out, he can use to walk through the balcony of to the other wing when the weather is bad. It’s a tough gig, I tell you.

The halls of University of Innsbruck, Christian Philosophy Department

Patrick’s school is about 2 blocks away from Justin’s building and right next to a ritzy indoor mall.  Both are aboout a 10 min walk from our place. Although we did lots of corresponding with the director of Patrick’s chool before we arrived, the directors changed over the summer (which we were aware of) and none of the correspondence was conveyed to the new person.  The short of it: he didn’t know we were coming until about 2 weeks ago.  However, he was very gracious and excited to have a composer and native English speaker in the school.  We did get his class schedule though and it looks like a high school schedule. Physics, German, English, Swimming (he’s pretty excited about that one), Math, Music, Art. Every day ends between 12:40 and 1:30. And, all of his classes are in German, so survival and language are his main focuses.

The elementary school with the Alps in the background!

Aeneas’s school os a bit further (maybe a 30 min walk) but we live right on the tram line that takes him directly to his school block. Both of the boys can use the same tram to school, Patrick will just get off earlier.

Aeneas was able to meet both of his teachers (2 teachers for 15 kids!) and do a little entrance exam while we met with the director. He did fine but the math was rough because they use the . for multiplication instead of the x and : for division instead of a /.  Asked about his impressions, and Aeneas said he thought it looked like a little kid school.  So we had to remind him that he was the “senior” class of his school.  Chip on the shoulder sufficiently installed. Since it’s an international school, kids aren’t admitted unless they can speak passable English.

Aeneas in his new classroom

Most of Aeneas’s school supplies.

There was a pretty extensive school supply list for Aeneas, which we would never have figured out had we not been able to go to a store, hand over the list and have a really nice lady put things in the basket for us. About 6 different pads of paper that varied in the types of lines, the size of booklets and the number of sheets! And they had to have special color coded book covers for the pads of paper. What happened to spiral bound folders?  He needs school shoes (which are like house shoes or slippers), sports shoes (tennis shoes for PE) and street shoes! I couldn’t find a pencil case for less than $20 and was thankful my mom sent the boys with one. They purchase all of their own art supplies and needed a really nice $20 writting pen. I totally expect Aeneas to be able to hand letter all of our Christmas cards in beautiful calligraphy by the time we get back. Granted some of these kids have been using the same supplies for the past 4 years, it’s a bit of a shell shock to start from scratch. Thankfully our friends that we met back in Vienna warned us of all of this. I thought, it can’t be THAT bad. Nope. She was right: you shell out a lot of cash. The movie clip below pretty much sums up what school supply shopping is like in Austria.

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