It’s creeping towards the end of July and I’ve spent the evening responding to PTA meeting emails and making a list of what items I need to bring for Viola’s last day of school festivities tomorrow.

Wait, it’s the end of July and we still have one day to go? What the actual heck?

The English school calendar is comprised of three terms (autumn, spring & summer). Each term is 13 weeks long and has a one-week break in the middle of it. This is called, unsurprisingly, “half-term.” The autumn term ends at Christmas, where you get a 2-3 week break. The spring term ends at Easter, where you get a 2-3 week break, and the summer term ends in late July where you start your summer. Does that makes sense?

Here it feels so normal to still be in the wind-down to school, but when I FaceTime family back home who are lounging around the house on a Wednesday or see the swim parties and late nights kids are having in the States- it reminds me of how DIFFERENT the school schedule is between where I grew up and where my kids are growing up.

For me, summer was 3 months that seemed to have no end or horizon- just an abyss of endless time that gave kids the chance to truly transform and dissolve from the confines of the previous school year. Do you remember as a kid coming back to school in August and seeing someone that had really, really changed into an almost unrecognisable version of who they were in May?

Well, here it’s a six week leap from the end of July through the start of September. August truly is the untouchable month where families flee Britain and head to sunny spots around the continent. It’s less of a time to dork around with your neighbours and stay up late riding back and playing flashlight tag as it is to go to your grandparents house in Cornwall or France. It’s less back-to-back weeks stuffed with driving to your grandparents, Disney trips, and summer camps and -instead- more camper trips to the beach and longer-term vacation rentals somewhere far away.

The thing about it is that it’s just short enough that parents can take the time off, too, for the most part. It’s a big family time- but the length of it seems to allow for one big trip rather than the sporadic and endless activities we have in the states over 3 months. I remember forecasting my summers in weeks: The first week we are here with my grandparents, the next week I go to camp, then I’m at home for the week and it’s my dads birthday, then we have our family vacation, then we come back to Dallas for (insert school-forced choir/band/drama “camp,” and then school starts. Is that still more or less how it happens?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sold on the English system entirely because I really loved my childhood summers… but it’s where we are and the amazing school we are in makes it so worth it, so we are keeping on and carrying on the best that we can to acclimate to sports days, summer school fairs & all-school performances rolling on through June and July. (Luckily, it's all be a lot of fun!)

And while we are on the topic…. Go ahead and list the summer you came back to school with the biggest transformation. Mine was, in my 7th grade opinion, definitely when I arrived back with braces and my ears pierced. I truly wondered if people would be able to recognise me. Ha!