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Published: April 13th 2009
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I woke to the sound of little feet and my door opening at 6 AM. I sat up and stretched out my arms wide. They were quickly filled by two five year olds as they hurled themselves at me. This is what I had come for. We snuggled a bit. T and E demanded to know if they had grown. They definitely had!
Then they took me on the house tour. My room was on the top floor and housed the TV and play station, a bathroom and a mini kitchen counter with a sink, microwave and mini fridge. Half a flight of stairs down is a heavy black metal door leading to a balcony facing the street. Another half flight down on the third floor is the master level. A large sitting room separated from the bedroom by a large frosted glass sliding wall. The bathroom is huge with a bathtub, glass shower, toilet and bidet. Another half flight down is MT’s office, about 3 times as big as the one she left behind in Seattle. It has wide windows and an air conditioner. The next flight of stairs brings you to the kids’ rooms. They are amazing! E’s
room has a yellow four-poster bed, fairies and castles on the wall and a chandelier like a pink metal bird’s nest complete with glowing eggs. She has her homemade dollhouse on her built in book shelves. Through a connecting door is T’s room complete with bunk bed and rocket ship chandelier with clear plastic wheels that spin. T has rocket ships and pirates on his walls (a pirate or two even managed to sneak onto a wall in E’s room). Another connecting door leads to their big bathroom and then out to the staircase once more. Half a flight down you find the guest room, complete with a Nana in residence. We said hello and continued the tour. The bottom floor holds the laundry room, big kitchen and large dining/entertaining room and a back courtyard. All throughout the house there are doors leading to balconies and all the ceilings are at least 10 or more feet high. This house is awesome.
We ate breakfast and walked the kids down the driveway to the bus stop. They climbed into a van and the care of the bus ayi and zoomed off to their school at 7:20. J headed off to
work, MT and I went back to the house and then headed off on some errands. We took the subway to the mall near their old house. I was surprised to find that I all I had to do was follow my feet, they remembered where to go. We found a badmitten net and rackets, some new polka dotted mugs, and were sold a small rechargeable vacuum by a man using excellent sales technique ending by jumping up and down on the vacuum then sucking up some white powder sprinkled with water. Then we ate lunch at McDonalds and crammed all our stuff and ourselves into a taxi to the pharmacy to pick up more antibiotic pills for E who had wasted a few while learning to swallow them. We made it back to the house by 1:30 PM and hurried to change clothes (it was a toasty 80 or so degrees out which I hadn’t packed for) and jumped in another taxi weaving through rush hour Shanghai style to the kids’ school.
T’s class was performing in the weekly assembly. I said hello to T who was sharing his theater seat with a freckled faced red headed boy,
his friend Ollie. We sat down and the kids began to pour in. We waved at E. The principal went onstage and greeted everyone. She looked so young and made a huge tactical mistake telling the kids not to try to look in the hole onstage, t hat all that was inside was a piano, while warning them to be careful when and if they came onstage. Of course, upon hearing this, every single kid stood up and craned their necks to peer inside.
This school is amazing- spic and span and high tech. There is even a café in the library and a large collection of good kids books available to check out. I would have loved to have attended school there. This weekly assembly is a clear example of our age: the technology age. PowerPoint slides along with music and the teacher introduced each child from T’s class with a face and a name as he or she ran on stage. Then came the singing and dancing in line. A wacky banana song and strange version of the hokey pokey later (where T consistently presented the wrong leg or arm- no doubt matching what he saw rather
than what he heard) and T and his class left the stage wearing big grins. This was a major milestone for T. In all his 5 years, 3 or so in some sort of class, he has never willingly participated in singing or dancing, certainly not onstage in front of an audience. Bravo, T!
It’s funny to me that the kids traveled all the way to China to turn into the average American 5 year old. They were pretty sheltered in Seattle, not watching much in the way of TV and living in a loving household. The new taller versions of them are a bit more blood-thirsty! I think it is kind of a good thing; we all have to grow up a little bit at a time.
The assembly ended with a scary story narrated and acted out by an older class, a celebration of birthdays this month, a welcome to new students and a good-bye to the one student leaving this month. Of course, that student was not even there. Completing the assembly was the school song and roar, “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, Dragons!” I have never, ever seen this much school spirit in an elementary school before. I
guess kids living in a foreign country need that extra feeling of belonging somewhere.
The school hosts a type of farmers market in the courtyard every Friday and after saying good-bye to E and T and seeing them to the bus ayi, MT, her mom and I scoped it out. The produce was lovely, the seafood packaged but fresh and the baked goods smelled divine. The place was filled with an odd collection of accents, languages and flowers.
We finished the day with a trip to Carrefour’s or Jolly-foos as it is pronounced. I helped put the munchkins to bed, snuggling with them in T’s room, reading stories and eventually falling asleep on them. I’m pretty sure they were still talking when I went out like a light. When I woke, T was curled up under his Cars blanket on my right and E was curled under her pink blanked on my left. I climbed over E, tucked them both in and headed upstairs for a shower and much needed sleep. I haven’t been too jet-lagged, but I’m awake by 6:30 (with hugs, of course) and asleep when the kids are, more or less.
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