it’s been a great two years

This past Wednesday, I took my camera with me when I dropped Madeline off at preschool, just like I did on her first day in August 2007. Wednesday was her last day of preschool. I snapped photos of Madeline swinging on the swings in the schoolyard, marveling that she doesn't need a grown-up to push her anymore, and feeling quite nostalgic and sad. Madeline's preschool has been such a constant part of our life here in the suburbs of BKK. Both she and I met the majority of our friends in that schoolyard, and though we'll see them across the courtyard in the kindergarten wing of big international school, I don't think that it will feel the same as this tiny little Reggio preschool down the soi with all of the stray dogs and the insanely smelly garbage trucks that take up 1.5 lanes on the narrow road. This is where my little girl learned to pump her legs to swing all by herself, where she learned to write the alphabet and spell her name (which she thinks is overly long, with eight letters), learned to read me books about a funny British kid named Kipper, made me laugh two years in a row while watching her on stage in her class plays. 

There is something that I am really looking forward to about kindergarten though: uniforms.