Adayla's First Day at School

My sweet little girl now goes to school all by herself. I am not quite used to it, but she seems to be doing well. Here is here first day of preschool (though the Chinese call it kindergarten) in Tim's words:


I got the chance to go with Adayla to her first day of Kindergarten today! It was so much fun to watch her - she's a big girl, especially when I see her wearing her "bei bao" (backpack). Class is from 0800-1145 and includes a snack and a lunch.There are 10 kids in her class with two dedicated teachers and several floating teachers. Today there were only 8 kids in class, and Adayla was the only non-Chinese. Since today was the first day, they asked that one parent stay the entire day to help their child transition. Adayla was the only child without a grandparent there. There were only two parents there as one child had a grandparent and a parent. In China it is customary that the parents give their children to the grandparents to raise so they can go out and work.

Here's the funny for the day: So this young Italian guy comes in to teach the kids English with his heavy Italian accent. The kids are sitting around him and he just starts talking English, no Chinese at all, and says "My name is Julio, what's your name?" He did this to the first three kids and made them all cry. He finally got to Adayla and said "You must speak English, what's your name?" and Adayla told him. He then asked where she was from and she said "America." He then told her "you need to help me teach your friends English, ok?"He then played some silly song that was in English, then he said, "Now we're going to learn the alphabet." He held up a sign that had the letter "A" on it, with a picture of an apple with its name. He told everybody that this was the letter "A" and had the kids repeat it several time, which they did. He then said "A is the first letter of this, do you know what it is?" No response, then he asked Adayla, "Can you tell everybody what this is?" and she firmly responded, "Ping guo" (apple in Chinese). It made all the adults laugh - I was cracking up! A little later he got to the letter "B" and did the same thing with it. There was a picture of a baskeball with the word "ball" written next to it. He asked his English-speaking helper again to tell everybody what it was and she again clearly stated "lan qiu" (basketball in Chinese). Again, everybody laughed - I was dying laughing!He had one more sign, this one for the letter "C." I couldn't wait for this, as it had a picture of a cat and I knew Adayla knew this in Chinese as well. But this guy wised up and just told everybody that "C" was in the word "cat." Oh too bad, I wanted to hear Adayla tell him it was a "mao."

Me again, I like hearing Tim's perspective on things. One of the many great things about this program is that he gets to do many things he normally is just not around for. And the girls are getting quite used to him being around!!