Happy Birthday to Julia’s friend Anna!
Today started out a bit sour. We skyped Maggie at 6:45—that was great! But we finished
that quickly and got out of the apartment on time to meet the 7:15 school
van. We were still waiting for it
at 7:30 am, darn it. At that
point, I thought that perhaps we had been accidentally left behind. So, as we started toward the city bus
stop, I called Chinese Maggie since she is my link to Mr. Lee, the van driver. Maggie was taking a vacation day, so an
untimely call, I’m afraid. As she
answered, the van finally appeared, and so we turned to head back to the
stop. I fumbled with the phone,
Julia hit a bump with her scooter, and the van began to turn to
leave—agghh! Julia’s scooter hit
the ground, knocking the bell parts off.
I scooped up the two I could see, got her up, hustled Maggie off the
phone, and frantically waved to Mr. Lee before he really did indeed leave us
behind. We crossed the very busy 4
lane street in less than perfect safety, got on board, and had to face the fact
that I had not gotten the central
part for the bell, which now no longer works. Darn it! Not a
good start to the morning.
So, it’s Friday of the first free week of the Montessori
program; we’ve had a great but exhausting outing to the beach this week, and
there are varieties of colds circulating (many parents blaming the school, and
the outing, for this!). So,
attendance is down a bit; we started with 5 children, and hit a high of 8,
including Julia. It’s terribly
humid out, too. So we moved to a
more group oriented schedule.
We worked on a beach bucket ‘book’ to commemorate our outing, and also
continued some work we’ve been doing on the parts of the body, to learn some of
that vocabulary (hair, hand, arm, leg—you get the idea). We traced everyone’s hands and colored
them to put on the bulletin board.
I also traced feet—which totally amazed and amused the children! They laughed and gawked and lined up
eagerly to have their feet done!
 |
| Working on the beac bucket project |
Through this whole process, Julia participated with steady
although low grade interest—she’d rather color than do a word search I’ve
provided her with, but she also feels a little ‘bored.’ Soon, the youngest student arrived,
Charles, to make her day. She
takes charge of him, sits him by her, traces his hand for him, gives him lots
of direction on handling this assignment, takes his photo, and generally has a
high time being Ms. Julia, classroom teacher! Note that Charles speaks not a word of English! But that didn’t seem to bother either
of them.
 |
| Julia coloring with Charles |
 |
| And taking his photo! |
Today is the start of a three day national and traditional holiday: Dragon Boat Festival. The traffic coming to school this
morning was non-existent, for instance, as many workers have the day off. Unfortunately, in Shandong Province, and Qingdao
particularly, there are no dragon boat races. The main way to celebrate here is
to make and eat tsongs (?) which are triangle shaped grass wrapped packets of
soft, sticky (even pasty) rice mixed with a variety of things—some sweet with
dates etc, some seasonings, some meat.
Sabrina brought me two from the store so that we could try them this
weekend; that was nice! They are supposed to be steamed, but we will have to
settle for microwaving them (if I can figure out the micro!).
Julia went with Abbey after lunch for some Chinese lessons
(they worked on color words), and then they, with Abbey’s two kids, Dylan and
Koko, biked/scootered up to Marina City, where they spent 2 hours at the indoor
playspace (where Koko had her birthday party). This seemed to be a success for all; Abbey is in charge of
Julia’s afternoons all next week, and even though I am finding my relationship
with her challenging, I am eager for it to be a workable situation for Julia;
it’s an advantage that Julia has enjoyed playing with Dylan, because that helps
Abbey out. Lily, the director of
the school, came by about 3 pm to ‘talk about Julia’s schedule’ next week: she proposed that ‘someone’ could take
her to do a few things in the city—like Polar World. I am so grateful that they have continued to be really
concerned about Julia’s wellbeing; we have been so well taken care of
here! I offered to pay the ticket
prices, saying how much she’d enjoy this kind of thing, but Lily simply put
that by; again, very, very kind and generous.
Out our classroom window this afternoon I had a great view
of a sailing class—a good 15 sailboats working back and forth across the bay
for an hour or more. A sail on the
blue sea is an eternally irresistible sight to me!
 |
The whole class!
|
 |
| A classic sailboat and lighthouse picture |
Our after school project involved going shopping with Mia,
who was taking us to a “Foreign Import Trade” store, where clothes intended for
shipment abroad are sold at a discount. I saw three different items with
“Mossimino” labels—I could be at Target! It was kind of like an outlet from 15 years ago, where the
merchandise is a haphazard pile of things that didn’t sell etc. We took a bus—one stop! Made me laugh!
Julia and I are committed walkers in a nation that isn’t very interested in
walking! The shopping was
fun—looking for bargains, estimating sizes (we were shopping for Elinor; don’t
tell), converting prices, adding to our pile (the sales woman got excited for a
while; she didn’t realize I would pare back down to a reasonable 2 or 3
pieces!), consulting with Mia who was also shopping, and then with her friend
who arrived to shop as well (young Chinese women are really sweet—like a
stereotypical 50s American girl!).
Julia was very friendly with Mia, who noted that she is going to warm up
to Mia just in time to leave the country!
That is Julia’s way, to go
cautiously a good long time! The
saleswoman of course wanted to know Julia’s story, and when I used my three
standard phrases, which include naming her hometown, she gave me a very
distinct thumbs up—I am appreciative of Chinese natives thinking that it is a
good thing Julia is now American, rather than being upset about that!
We left the young people shopping to go get Julia some
dinner: American restaurants
filled the scene tonight! Pizza
Hut and Starbucks side by side and “Old McDonald’s” as Julia calls it, on the
May 4 Square, calling her name! I
love this view of the May 4 monument—all horizontal planes. It’s quite a striking structure. And many a kite was flying high above
it this evening. On the way there,
we passed a really large construction site for the Qingdao Metro; I have been
meaning to note that when one says that Qingdao is one massive construction
site, that is in good part because they are in the process of building a
Metro—how
do cities add an
underground subway to a thriving city? Amazing; it’s going slow here, but it
will be comprehensive when finally finished, leaving more room for cars if they
can cut back on the number of buses!
 |
| American restaurants |
 |
| And more! |
 |
| May 4 Square |
On the bus, Julia was deeply engaged with her Happy Meal toy
(the junk they pedal!) and I noticed a young man smiling at her. He approached me with about 6 stops
left on our commute, and we stood talking for a good while. I think he wanted to use his English,
which was quite good. He opened
the conversation by remarking on how cute Julia is; he asked if I were her
‘grandmother.’ Sigh. As you can see from the photo Julia
took of me today, my hair is definitely changing color; more gray than brown, I
think! (also so much wild, uncut
hair; I cannot wait to get it home for a cut!). This young man also wanted to know Julia’s story; he asked
quite a few questions about it, trying to get the details straight. He mentioned the dilemma of the one
child policy; he is an only child, and not that happy about it. He stated that he would like to have
the opportunity to adopt a child himself—what a good idea that is! To take the
living Chinese children who need families and add them to the families who are prevented
by cost and law from having a second child. Someone should promote this idea!
 |
| Busy on the bus |
I was standing next to a woman who crocheted for the entire
bus ride a beautiful piece of green lace; she was fast! We made semi-communication on my
appreciation of her work. I
decided not to photograph her, out of some dim sense of respect for her right
to quietly do her thing on the bus.
Instead, I took a photo of this woman’s wild shoes! I have seen a lot of shoes with this
zipper up the heel design; all the rage right now.
Coda on the day’s events: as we scootered down the hill from the bus stop, through the
evening’s vendors all set up for business (it’s about 6:30 pm), I said to
Julia, ‘keep your eagle eye out for that missing piece from the bike bell.’ And, lo and behold, there it was!
Quietly sitting under a vendor table, waiting through almost 12 hours of daily
traffic, for Julia to spot it and bring it home. Just one more proof that we have been living in a rain of
grace for the last 2 months.
No comments:
Post a Comment