Forest School in Santa Cruz

 It's been exactly one week since Roan started Santa Cruz Forest School.  Four days a week, we drive on route 9, through morning sun beam that filters though between tall redwoods at 8:30 in the morning to get to the Nest at 9am for the start of his forest school.  Roan and I chitchat through these windy drives happily.  Sometimes I sing the smurfs song to him, "over the mountains, across the oceans, lives a group of happy smurfs..."  On these drives, life is just content.  It's so beautiful, peaceful and happy for both of us. I tries to focus at the moment so that I remember it and relive it again and again. 

We are staying in Santa Cruz for three months from December to end of February. So I signed him up for this forest school during our stay here.  The class has 7-9 kids, depending on the day with 2 teachers (Teacher Amanda, Ra and Lisa), it's hosted at the Nest, a space dedicated for outdoor education, very close to the Henry Cow State Park.  Besides the kids and the teachers, there are also a goat (Cody) and a horse (Copper) who lives at the school. Cody sometimes come to beg treats when the kids are having lunch. 

   I was a little surprised how easy the separation process was.  We met with Teacher Amanda on Monday at Next briefly. Then his first day at forest school is on Tuesday. When I drop him off, he walked off to the a small pile of stick, and asked me if he could pick up one to play, I said yes, he was then happily off to school.  I came a little early to prepare for an early pick up, but he seemed content to stay for much longer, so I hanged out with group, see them climbing and playing with sticks in the woods. At one point, I noticed that his rain boots are wet. So I got him taking his feet out. They are completely soaked. Apparently he had stepped into a stream before! And he didn't say a word to the teacher about his wet shoes.  It seemed he didn't mind it that much either. He refused to switch his soaking wet rain boots for the spare hiking boots which was dry, he ended up just wearing a dry pair of socks in a wet rain boot for the rest of the hour. 

After we went home,  when helping him to wash hands, I noticed that he got several splinters in his palm. One of them is quite big. He didn't say anything to the teacher or me earlier. Because I didn't have any handy tool with me, so I didn't do anything with it that day. The next day, Teacher Amanda helped him to pull it out with a tweezers. Teacher Amanda told me at the end of the class that he was very tough, didn't say it hurts. On the drive back, I asked him, did it hurt. He said yes. "Did you tell teacher Amanda?" "No." Roan is tough like that.  

   On Thursday, when I was picking up Roan, he was digging on the ground with other kids, and having some kind small argument. Nearby another kid was whacking a small tree with strong force. Later when I was taking him to the car. He told me "不想砍小树" (don't want the tree to be slashed).   I asked him if he was concerned about the little tree the other kid was whacking. He nodded. I took him back to the little tree and touched it gently, and let the tree know we were concerned for him. 

   Santa Cruz is very new, even though we have spent 4 months in the same house last year. But it seems Roan has experienced the change so much more vividly this time, as he really misses Dumbo and his friends from Downtown Little School this time. He has been quite a bit more clingy since we came to Santa Cruz. Josh was not able to come with us right away. So Josh just arrived today after we have been here for 10 days. In the last 10 days. Roan is attached to me like a shadow, day and night. I was only getting a break when he's off at school. All the other time, he follows me around like my sidekick. It's a bit exhausting, but I hope it will get better when he gets more familiar with the area.