Getting ready for School

As the schools in the US are getting ready for spring-break, the schools here in Panama are getting ready to start their new year. Getting all of the school supplies ready is a chore. I went to 5 stores and am still missing 1 item. Hopefully, I will find it this week before my child actually needs it at school. Coming from the US, there were a few things that caught me off guard with this whole getting ready for school thing.

1. I needed to buy 15 composition books/writing tablets, but different kinds. A few had to have only 96 pages, some 120 pages and a couple 200 pages. In each of those page catagories though, some were wide lined, some double lined, some regular lined, 1 was graph paper lined....it did not stop there though. A few were to be binded with stitches and some could be the regular glue bound ones. The supply list was all in Spanish and thankfully I had a friend shopping with me that could explain it!

2. Each composition book, writing tablet and school book needs to be have a label with the child's name, grade and subject. I am not sure if they needed the subjects, but on all of the composition books we made sure they had the subject so my son would know which book was what. Then you have to cover the books and tablets with clear contact paper. I think my husband spent between 3 and 4 hours just covering the books. I did a few, but my husband the perfectionist had shaken his head at me when he saw that some of the labels I had put on were not exactly straight. So, I let him do most of the work and I just helped. :) Four complete rolls of contact paper and we are done!

Since this is the just the beginning of the school year, I am sure we will find other areas just as different as this part was. Time will tell. :)