T had a great day at school!!!

I showed up half an hour early and waited outside the building. While waiting I noticed a liquor store across the street (a big difference from the US). By fifteen minutes after he was supposed to get out there were a lot of kids waiting around outside and walking off but no T. I walked around and saw some kids playing in the playground behind the building. I walked into the playground (BTW - security is very lax compared to the US, this morning the doors were unlocked and we walked right in with no one to stop us) and I saw his backpack by itself on a bench. I scanned around and sure enough, he was in a cluster of four kids playing on a big basket swing. I watched quietly and they seemed to be talking with him and using lots of hand expressions. After a few minutes one of the kids noticed me and pointed me out to T, then he came over. They all said "bye T...," then the larger group of boys that were playing soccer nearby called out lots of "bye T..." as well. I was amazed that so many kids knew his name. He was happy when he came over and I asked about the day. He said he made 9 or 10 new friends today, he wasn't sure because there were so many! He said that he learned some German words and listed them off "nine means no, ja means yes, bitte means thank you (actually I'm pretty sure it means please but I wasn't going to argue), moin moin means good morning and moin means hi (he's learning Plauttdeutsch!), and so on ... I cautiously asked if anything bad happened and he said he didn't like gym. Why? Because you have to change clothes. Whew ... I'm glad that was as bad as it got. School seems to be less brutal here then in the states. I asked about homework and he showed me his math work and so on. I asked what he wanted to do and we went to a store in town to look at lego sets. I told him to pick he wanted out one and bought it for him to celebrate his first day at school. Then we walked back home and I went back to work. I hope things at school continue as well for him. This was one of my biggest worries about moving to Germany and now I feel much more relieved.