Friday May 11, 2012

We have had an eventful day today, a good one in all ways.

First of all, I am, as I type, eating my first ‘real’ banana since last Saturday; for a vegan, bananas are an essential food, eaten sometimes 2 or 3 times a day! And I have been suffering! The Chinese eat very ripe bananas, in fact, nauseatingly ripe! When I found green looking bananas this evening on my shopping expedition (more about that later), I offered up thanksgiving!

A happy girl with her new uniform and new backpack!

... An outfit only complete, of course, with great pink leggings and shoes!

The day began with a field trip for Julia; her class visited a greenhouse where cutting edge work is being done to use solar energy as a pesticide—sounds cool! It was an hour bus ride, but with the 1 st, 3rd and 4th grades, so an opportunity to meet more kids (Julia is in the 3rd grade class at Qingdao Amerasia International School). While a little nervous about how it would all go, she went off cheerfully; it compensates for the Marquette field trip she is missing this week! Back at school in the afternoon, she participated in a science class where the students made a functional battery-operated car which ran up and down the hallway of the school—very fun! I saw her leaning into the group over the shoulder of the teacher, and, later, running down the hall after the car in the midst of the crowd. Good for a mother’s worried heart!

Julia is taking her afternoon classes—Chinese, and ‘specials’: art, drama, music-- with the 1st and 2nd grades (why, I don’t know!), and her Chinese teacher told me that she can say 3 sentences as of today! So another success.

And then, she got invited home to play with Maci! Woo woo! Maci’s family has been in China for 3 months, from Utah, here because Dad is starting a business, and so Mom (Danielle) is teaching kindergarten at QAIS; 4 children in the family, Maci is the youngest. They are the same age; Julia probably should be in the 2nd grade class; but maybe she will get the best of both groups this way! Julia rode the bus home with Maci! Without me! And, at 6:56 pm, she is still there! Dinner at McDonald’s (!) and a request to go back to the apartment to continue playing. What a lovely way to end this somewhat tumultuous week. And clear proof that she is feeling completely better. Whatever the IV drip contained, it appears to be powerful!

Feeling better!

From my end, it was a good day in class, executing some of the changes I am going to make in the way things go. This is tricky because of the dedicated and really nice aides who’ve been holding down the fort for months. I had a lovely experience with a paint box and a series of 6 children. Watching the kids in total concentration as they thought and then selected a color (from the standard Crayola box of 8!), and dabbed it in circles on a square of white paper only 3 by 6, I was in a very good place. Life should always be as good as a handful of kids, some lovely art, and innocent joy in a newly discovered skill.

For my part, it was a language opportunity. I talked out loud what they were doing, using as many clear English words as I could, and repeating over and over those same words and phrases. “Jim (they all have English names; the names are straight out of 1965!) is thinking about what color to use; What color did Jim choose? He chose yellow.  Jim is putting the yellow next to the brown. Now Jim rinses his brush. What color is Jim choosing now?” etc etc. The children repeated the color words and some caught on to other words; Mickey (a little girl who looks EXACTLY like Helena Bonham Carter!) excitedly urged her classmates to rinse the brush whenever anyone was about to forget. It wasn’t classic Montessori, but it was a great language cum art experience, and served to create community for me with some of the children who had been holding me at arm’s length.

I further broke down barriers by being willing to look silly! We started the day with circle time, me singing, always a foolish experience! That included “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” sang several ways including FAST! Which totally amused the children! Of course. We are more noisy than a Montessori class should be; so be it; there’s only so much change I can make! At the end of the day, we needed to keep about half the class (8-9) in the room for 15 more minutes. So I ‘did the Hokey Pokey’ to the absolute delight of the very nice aide who had earlier in the week accompanied Julia and me to the hospital for translation needs. She laughed immoderately over the next hour every time she thought of me ‘turning all around.’ And the kids just loved it. While listening to body part words. So not a totally silly activity!

Also today I gave a little speech to parents about the many stimulating ways I am going to manage this class for the next 5-7 weeks, reassuring them that they are getting their monies worth since the original teacher has had to take medical leave. I ‘did warm’ according to the principal in a soothing and convincing way, so I think they are all satisfied with the current state of things. And we flashed my doctor title around which has a certain effect.

At the end of the day, I had a plan to go grocery shopping downtown (we live out further) and no little girl to drag along. So off I went to Carrefoure, a British-based store which is on par with Walmart combined with the 3rd world feel of parts of China—not a great experience, but they’ve got everything. Including whole aisles of fruit and vegetables I’ve never seen, exotic, bulbous, spiny looking things, some huge! And lots of other weird looking foodstuffs and strong smells. It’s quite an experience. 4 aisles of snack foods—both sweet and salty. Kind of like the Amish in their passion for white sugar. I walked through every aisle, trying to get a sense of what is available for what kind of price. I could buy oatmeal and raisins, which surprised me, and Dove chocolate and peanut M & Ms! Also oreos. And small black spiny things that might have been either a fruit or an insect—couldn’t tell! There’s a Subway and a Starbucks in the building as well. Jacobs wine for 156 rmb. Couldn’t buy it even though I know that isn’t actually all that much! One bottle of Tsingtao beer for 4 rmb. No American or European beer choices. A whole long wall of milk products, which really surprised me; aren’t Asians lactose intolerant?

I was approached by a sweet woman named Alice who chatted me up about my nationality. I can’t figure what her motivation was. She told me she’d like to ‘stay in touch’ during my stay. Very well dressed and with excellent English—what did she want?!

And to end my day, I managed the bus! At rush hour. Packed to the absolute gills. I realized suddenly that the people with whom I was standing in the middle of the bus were passing their bus cards up to the front to be counted. No fear of stealing or lost at all. Someone gestured to me, and so I passed my 1 yuan (about 16 cents) up also. A few minutes later, the card holders were handed back through ½ a  dozen hands. This in a city of millions.

The bus and the roads are packed!

I knew where the stop was to get on, and what number to take, and I knew where I was heading, but I did not have the name of the exact stop—pretty risky! I had a slip of paper with the general stop in Pinyon and Chinese, and I am getting to be somewhat familiar with this route. I was a little nervous, though. As we approached the area that I knew was near our apt. (after about 30 minutes of bus ride), I asked the woman in front of me if we were getting close to the stop on my paper. Her answer was definite, but then followed by a less definite sense. I felt anxious. Then a mother holding a sleeping toddler reached up and assured me that this was my stop. There have been a surprising number of English speakers; nothing like a plurality, but enough to make it worth the effort to ask in a given situation. We are not wholly isolated!

So a good day of work, a successful provisioning opportunity, a happy day at school, and a satisfying playdate to provide that missing element from the life of a 21st century American child. Julia just came in, took her medicine, chatted while brushing teeth and changing clothes, settled into bed, and fell asleep before I had read two paragraphs of “By the Shores of Silver Lake.”!!  May the sleep gods keep her content until past 7 am!