Early February brought blazing summer heat and my eldest's first day of school. We'd gone ahead a day earlier to sort enrollment and get her uniform fitted. She looked slightly bewildered trying on a school uniform for the first time. At the supermarket, we grabbed one of those massive Sistema lunchboxes every Kiwi kid seems to have, plus fruit and snacks for morning tea. That first lunchbox felt like a challenge—I packed her favorites: spam rice balls, mini Oreos, and capsicum and fruit. The box was comically large.
On her first morning, fortune smiled: she sat beside another Korean girl, also here for a year-long adventure, equally nervous. I felt my own tension ease as I chatted with the other mum outside the classroom.
That weekend, my parents arrived with our two younger daughters. We'd moved into a motor lodge that could squeeze all seven of us. The sisters reunited with squeals and chaos. We sorted the middle one's uniform, and by Monday both girls marched off to school together. Her class also had a Korean girl who'd arrived days earlier—these friendships would anchor their entire year.
The walk to school sparkled with sea light. Kids in matching uniforms ran about, some barefoot and utterly free. Here, children mixed across ages—just "juniors" and "seniors" playing together. We heard English, Korean, Mandarin swirling around. Our girls plunged into this foreign current, clinging to their Korean friends like lifelines as the first term began.
