First Day of School!

Today was Zoe and my first day of sixth grade. I've been bouncing back and forth between being really excited and scared out of my wits. The nerves took over once we reached the front doors, and all of a sudden I wanted to run back to the car and have Mom drive me home. But Zoe, being the ever daring person that she is, just rolled her eyes and grabbed my arm, pushing open the doors with her free hand.

Now what? I thought, as we stood there in the main lobby, people and teachers all milling around us. Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? I turned to Zoe, panicking, and for the first time that morning, she looked as nervous as I felt.

Then, to  our great relief, we heard a teacher calling, "Sixth graders! Sixth graders over here!" Zoe and I hurried over to the woman. She smiled at us and asked for our names.

"Charlotte and Zoe Tate," I told her over the voices of the quickly expanding mob of students around us.

"Tate, Tate," she mumbled. "All right, you two will be with Mr. Mortenson." She pointed to a man standing behind her. He grinned and waved at us. I grimaced. He wore a bright pink hawaiian shirt decorated lavishly with pictures of pineapples and ukeleles, and he had braided his beard into a long strand that he seemed to be constantly stroking. His hair was tied into a wild ponytail, and his eyebrows were so bushy that it was a wonder that he could see out of them at all. When I looked down at his feet, I found them to be fit into bright blue flip-flops, and his tattered denim shorts revealed legs that were so covered in thick, black hair that you could hardly see his skin.

I looked at my sister, stricken. He was still grinning goofily at us, revealing very crooked, very yellow teeth. Zoe wasn't trying to hide the look of absolute disgust that was forming on her face. This was the man that we would have to see every single morning for an entire year?

"Follow me, girls," he told us. We followed him obediently, along with a handful of other sixth graders. The looks of disgust on our faces were echoed on theirs. I caught Zoe's eye, and we both dissolved into giggles.

 

Once we got to his room, we soon discovered that as a person he wasn't all that bad; actually, he sounded like he would be a very fun homeroom teacher. But his physical appearance was beyond revolting - I almost threw up when I saw that he had long strands of black hair growing out of the collar of his shirt.

Besides that obvious setback, all in all it was a pretty good day. It turns out that Zoe and I have homeroom, lunch, and math together (we're both in the advanced program), and a lot of people from my elementary school that I know pretty well are in some of my classes. The classes themselves sound pretty interesting, and the teachers seem strict but nice at the same time. Luckily, they didn't assign any homework yet, but that's probably going to change pretty soon!

 

Here are some pictures that my mom took of us as we were waiting for the bus. Zoe refused to dress up, even though we were getting our pictures taken at school today! Mom has long since stopped trying to convince her to wear nice clothes, so she just let her go in sweat pants and a tank top.



 

It's sad that summer's over, but sixth grade so far sounds like it'll be pretty fun! There wasn't any reason for me to be nervous about it! Do you still go to school? Were you (or are you) ever nervous about the first day at a new school?

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!