Torture for parents

The schoolyear starts on September 1st and here are the school books we collected yesterday. Workbooks don't have to be covered but textbooks do. It's required because they get reused the following year. With all the advances in technology you'd think that someone would have invented spray-on book covering film like those cooking sprays that people use to coat baking pans and cookie sheets. It would have to be fully biodegradeable, natuurlijk, because Flemish schools are seriously green-minded. Aluminum foil and plastic sandwich bags are frowned upon for sandwich lunches, and so are juices in tetra packs. Fizzy drinks like Coke are forbidden. If I had 1 cent for each Tupperware sandwich box I've had to wash over the years I could probably buy myself a nice new lens.

Both children are in new schools this year, so we also have masses of school forms to complete in Dutch, a language that T and I can barely speak. It's been a fun-filled day.


Flemish schools have excellent academic standards and tuition is free. This makes book-covering and Tupperware-washing torture worth it.

p.s.
My kids hate posing for me, especially if they know they might get blipped, but they were gracious enough to throw me some half-hearted sneers. They don't know it yet, but they will be covering their books themselves.