Sophia and Ann start school!

After weeks of Sophia begging me and me begging the principal of the kindergarten program...Sophia started school today. On Monday we had visited the hospital for a hep B test and physical --just as I had in the fall with Helen, and bought a little 书 包 (shu bao --bookbag)..above is Sophia with a "who me?" look on the way to school...

As we get closer, a little pensive...

Not a bad looking classroom..but "do I really have to take off my shoes?"

"OK -- I am going in..."
Of course right after this moment, Mom and Dad disappeared and we could hear the crying before we got away...oh the guilt -- even with the third child it gets no easier! The report this afternoon was positive...she cried in the morning for a while, but played and ate and napped OK, woke up fine with no crying in the afternoon...whew!!! It was a long day for me, wondering how it was going. We had taught her a few words in Chinese for potty, hungry, etc. and sent her off to see what happened. The principal had been trying to put me off by stating that the kindergarten was full, but in the end admitted that she was nervous about Sophia being at the youngest end of the class and speaking so little Chinese and the teachers not speaking English. I won her over in the end by asking her just to try it for a month and see how it is going..and of course the teachers do speak a few words of English to her as needed and she was so HAPPY when I picked her up and showed me her playground and told me about the toys. She had to give up the pacifier for naps and I was nervous about that, too (she still ended up with it tonight, however --) but I didn't want to scare the Chinese teachers with our odd American ways (and she is getting too old anyway).

Tonight she is already saying "hao bu hao" to Helen ( kind of like saying "yes or no?" -- teachers say it a lot when giving a choice....) I am guessing she will pick up phrases as fast as Helen or more so. The teacher is a veteran teacher who seemed happy to meet Sophia and the other teachers nice, too. There is a tiny western-style potty in the nursery school, which was a relief. The nursery kindergarten is run by the same administration as Helen's but has its own building, just two blocks from our building. It is just for the smallest children , 2 1/2 to 3 years old. It looked well supplied with toys and there is a small play yard, also riding toys and balls. I confided in a grandmother who was waiting at the gate with me at 4:20 that I was afraid my daughter had cried all day, and she assured me "mei guanxi" the all purpose Chinese phrase for "it doesn't matter -- its OK". She emphasized that all the children do at the beginning -- an international phenomenon. I was pleased that a little girl we have already met was in the class-- Xing Yi. Her mother works in the waiban office (foreign faculty affairs office) and they were on the bus trip to the Hakka roundhouses we took back in December. So I have a familiar face (and a parent fluent in English) if needed, which has been helpful in Helen's class.

So the next question one may be asking is -- "what will Ann do all day with no Sophia to follow around? " I am now a full time college student for the first time in a very long time! I have my own student ID, my own Chinese name, and today was my first test..a written and oral placement test. I want to place out of the introductory semester into the second semester of Chinese -- but the test was the same one for everyone, so I found it quite difficult. The 150 characters I do know did not seem to appear together in the same sentence so I was unsure of almost everything!
About my Chinese name...our tutor helped me come up with it..it is 林子 安 or Lin Zi An (Lin is a direct translation of Forest..also one of the most common surnames in China, An, pronounced like Ann without a Midwestern drawl, means contented or peaceful and the zi is there to make it sound better!) I have been filling in to forms for school and the doctor's office/nursery school for Sophia, and its amazing how comforted the Chinese are by it -- they don't care that its not my legal name -- just glad to see those characters! I guess its similar to the way that Chinese people often have an English nickname. On Saturday my orientation will conclude and I will get my schedule for the semester. I know I will be a bad student because we will be doing some traveling and hosting visitors, but I am excited to have something to myself again. Michael and I actually had lunch in the faculty dining room today after I fished him out of his office...I had never been there..

Here he is, hard at work until I turned up. Tomorrow is a pretty free day since my classes haven't started and Sophia is in school-- what will I do? The possibilities are endless, but I will likely squander it on doing bills and cleaning our cluttered apartment!