Maia’s first first school day was about two years ago, in Oxford, where she took the Foundation stage year at the New-Marston Primary School. It happened during the year-long blank period of this blog and did not get a proper mention. But it is an important point of comparison for me today, when Maia was again a first-day school-girl, this time at the Kodaly Music School in Budapest. Two schools, two countries, two ages of one and the same girl is what this story is all about.

This time there are more characters: Ivan, recently turned 4, has returned to his kindergarten up the Castle Hill; and Peter, 15 months old now, had his first visit to the nursery, where Maia once went. Each of them deserves his own story of today. The prehistory of Maia’s starting school in Hungary is a story on its own, which is also worth telling. It has received due coverage on Facebook and has even generated an opinion poll among my friends there. To prevent this entry from gaining the size of a small novel though, I shall tell all these separate stories under different headings.
Maia’s story begins with excitement, her anxiety growing over time. With the special day approaching she kept talking about it more and more. She asked for books, pens and other school stuff while shopping together, and she in fact received all these from Emese, as well as two school bags – one from her mom, and one from my aunt, coincidentally both pink in colour, and over too big in my view. But Maia of course loved them, and kept opening and closing the different compartments, planning where to put her school stuff.

All this came to an extreme on the day before D-day. We drove from Horgos in the morning and the subject of school was often touched in the car. I admit being part of the reason for this, often reminding Maia that school-girls are not supposed to do this or that. She seemed to take this very seriously. After we had arrived to Budapest, she went through her clothes and chose a formal skirt and a white cotton shirt and hanged them at the entrance. Then she came to me with a pair of black shiny shoes, showing me that they were broken, and asking me to glue them, so that they could be ready for the next morning. I tried to explain that it will be very unfortunate if they break again during the ceremony but Maia was confident: „Just do it, daddy, I only need them for one day.” So I did glue them. Maia then volunteered to read an entire fairy-tale in Bulgarian – something she had never managed to do before.

Maia was very concerned about the following morning. She went to the loo twice before falling asleep, and one of the last things she told me in the evening was: „If it happens so that I wee-wee in bed tonight, I shall take a quick shower in the morning, won’t I?” And she got her sheets wet indeed, making me change them in the middle of the night, comforting her as much as I could: she was still a big girl, ready to go to school. First thing I heard in the morning was Maia, all dressed up and ready, whispering excitedly in my ear: „Wake up, Pavel, wake up, it will soon be time to go.”

With my shaving and ironing in the morning we managed to arrive in the last possible minute. Emese and Maia jumped out of the car in front of the school gate while I parked and brought Ivan and Peter along. They both had to be there, first, because the occasion was important, but second, because there was no one to leave them with at 8 am. Peter was also due for a final pre-nursery medical check, but this had to wait for Maia’s first school class.

A great portion of Maia’s excitement in my view was rooted in her school memories from England two years ago. She loved New Marston Primary, she loved her time there, she loved her teachers, the other kids, and most of all: she loved Aliya and Jessie – the inseparable girls’ trio. I have to admit being somewhat afraid that this could lead her to disappointment: Hungary’s school system is quite conservative and in fact not seemingly playful and full of entertainment and games like the English one. So Maia was heading to a great disappointment in that respect – I knew it, but there was not much to be done about it – so we all relied on the music profile of the school to make Maia’s clash with East-Europe’s educational system softer.

And the clash happened. In the corridors, crowded by school-kids, parents and teachers, all moving to the gym, Maia appeared next to some unknown boy, at least a head taller than her, and refused to walk hand in hand with him - so the teacher had to take her hand. Being the youngest in class for reasons that I have already promised to disclose, Maia was struggling for attention and individual care. But these were not easily possible to get in the first-day-of-school crowd that was packing the spacious school gym of the Kodaly Music School on that morning. At least she was lucky to sit in the front, which gave her a good view of the bigger children who sang and performed their instruments. I was able to squeeze Ivan and myself to the front of the parents’ crowd, neatly followed by Emese and Peter, to a position from which I could take several photos of the event and Maia’s role in it.

The role got a bit wet by the end. First, Maia did not want us to leave the Gym with the rest of the parents and release a round of tears when this eventually happened. Back to the children’s school-room Maia was a bit frustrated. Emese had met a younger colleague whose son was also starting school on the same day and in the same school, so after another round of desperation and tears, Maia finally had someone to talk to and compare pencil sets with. She was doing it as we were walking out after all, heading to what was left from the day’s tasks. Leaving her behind felt very emotional, and it turned out that both Emese and I were affected by Maia’s crying and tears. Perhaps we should have kept her playing in the kindergarten for another year after all, I thought vaguely while driving us home. What a retreat! Emese, in turn, told me not to accuse her, as it was not her fault that we were not in England, where Maia loved her school so much. What was most disturbing for me in this moment was the sense, that I am submitting my precious daughter into a meat-grinding school system, of the kind both Emese and myself had been through in socialist times, best depicted in The Wall by Roger Waters and Pink Floyd back in 1979. I had been critical about things like the Royal Wedding celebration being part of the school curriculum in England, so needless to say, the view and sound of hundreds of Hungarians of various ages standing and singing the country’s national anthem did not thrill me much. What were we heading to – and would there be a chance for Maia to get out of there if need be – were some of the issues I was contemplating over while waiting for Maia and Ivan

But all worries were in vain. When Maia appeared in the flat’s entrance door an hour later she was again smiling, shining happy and elevated. She told me excitedly and in great detail how there was nothing to study on the first day, and they just had a chat with the teachers, and then went for lunch „several times,” as we heard. She even agreed to give an interview on camera, which I gladly recorded. This was the end of all worries – Maia said she loved school and was looking forward to get to it on the following day. That is tomorrow.