Xandra's Bday Party

It's been quite the weekend. We went to Xandra's birthday party at the Curiosity Zone on Saturday. Here is Emma in her "lab coat" making floam, playdough, and sidewalk chalk. She was so excited to see her friends from Chesterbrook, after a week of Kindergarten and new friends.

Sunday afternoon was our first Chinese School class. Emma is enrolled in Chinese Kindergarten. To me, and to the Fairfax County Public School System, "Kindergarten" entails reading stories, singing songs, doing art projects, and learning some stuff along the way. To the Chinese, it means sitting for over 1.5 hours (thankfully 10 min break in between!) learning Pin Yin, speaking Chinese, and listening to your teacher. Man, I felt slightly bad for the kid.

Emma was decidedly not gung ho about Chinese school when I first told her she would be going. Certainly, "Chinese School" does not sound as glamorous or as fun as "Gymastics" or "Ballet" or "Gymboree." So, I bribed her with a Ring Pop and got her to go.

But really, she seemed to enjoy herself. When I would peek into the classroom, she would flash me a smile and a thumbs up (our non verbal check-in we've used for a while now) and seemed genuinely happy. Also, I noticed they were starting to "write" Pin Yin - so she had to copy letters on a sheet of paper and go up to the board and do it too, and this is the type of thing any child of mine would be all over, and she was.

The class is spoken entirely in Chinese, and she seems to understand what's going on, though the teacher said she refused to speak. Plus, when I casually mentioned, "Next week at Chinese school..." she seemed fine with it! So let's see how long we can keep this up.