Her new home

This is not Hogsmeade. This is the woodwind department where Katie will spend many hours in the coming months and years.

It was a very big, long day. The journey down was tricky for her but she handled it really well in the circumstances with the addition of a couple of extra breaks. 

When we managed to park and find a toilet, she then immediately looked at home walking round the stunning campus at the heart of what is a mix of an Austin adaptation, Hogwarts and Mallory Towers. We found her Moll who had decided she wasn't going to school that afternoon, she was coming to deliver her sister back to school and see Katie. A picnic in front of the cathedral for B, Katie and I while we all chatted, before ice cream from the best place in Wells. 

Lisa and I went to the uniform sale while N showed Katie round some of the school, particularly the much anticipated swimming pool - which did not disappoint, and looks absolutely brilliant. We said goodbye to them shortly after and explored a little more. Katie confidently showed B the swimming pool and other things she'd seen and was getting very antsy to get to the boarding house. 

It wasnt the easiest time dropping her to the house, she got shy when a couple of the girls were not especially welcoming and she took a lot of encouragement to leave my side, only to keep running back and not letting me leave. I was having a meeting with the house parent, trying to sort out a few things and get some answers for Katie about things like her music timetable which we can't access currently (though staff all think we should be able to) and her practice times, because it's all a bit different in year 6 to when she's a fully fledged senior pupil. Anyway, she kept coming back and snuggling nearer to me and was clutching her tiny, secret bear in her pocket very tightly, having felt she should put monkey upstairs. 

Thankfully, they had to go up to school for supper so I took the opportunity to leave as she stood in the entrance hall with the others. 

Our little spy in the senior school spotted her at dinner. N said she seemed happy and that everyone wanted to talk to her. I didn't hear from her at all the rest of the night but she sent B a photo of Ted (the tiny secret bear in her pocket) who is her and Katie's mascot who has joined Katie on her Wells adventure after travelling all over the globe with B. 

I've had an email a from the house parent asking me to send her vitamins and on pressing about how things were, she said "it's early days, but it was a good first day". So I'm not entirely sure how to take that. 

School starts tomorrow (well, today as I am writing this at 5am Tuesday) and they're hitting the ground running with an exciting week of more live music activities than she's had in a year.