First day of school

Monday was the first official day of class for the trade school so we had an official opening ceremony, like a real Ukrainian school! This year we have 7 first year students who have classes in the mornings and 6 returning students who study in the afternoons. They work in the mornings, and somehow Valera just stayed over at the new farm where he was on guard duty instead of coming for the ceremony as planned and going back, if you are counting students in the photo below.

 Everyone was dressed up for the occasion, first we played the Ukrainian national anthem, then Garry spoke for a few minutes about the history of the school, and how proud John Wiens would be that this year we had two classes of students studying for the first time.

 We had invited the village school principal to be our guest speaker, and she brought a bell that they have the new students ring at their opening ceremonies, it has been used for at least forty years in Nikolipolia.

 Several of the students rang the bell when she brought it over to where they were standing during her speech. As you can see we have more girls than guys this year. Andrey rang the bell, he is the only new guy!

We introduced the teachers, and they talked about what they will be teaching this year

Then we handed out gift bags for the teachers, guest speaker, and the students, the guys got Canada caps, the girls scarves, (they all got toothbrushes, thanks to one of the teams that came this spring) the teachers Canada key chains, and the principal got a Canada pen and large flag.

The whole group (taken by Valentina's guest)

Valentina's guest who came to see her start school
We gave her a Canada pen, too.

A lady who knew Valentina from the orphanage had taken a bus to come see her at her new school, she stayed overnight at the house with the girls at the group home, and came to our opening ceremony.

You see were the water stain is over the board in the classroom? I had the Ukrainian flag over it, but Garry took it outside for opening ceremonies. Guess I need to find the ladder, I stood on a table to hang it the first time.

School begins for the new students