It’s a little bit comical to have your child attending an all Chinese speaking school They have a teacher that speaks pretty good English, and she tried to tell me that Tuesday I needed to bring Colt to school at 9:30 instead of 9. She also communicated that there would be no school on New Years day. Ok, I got that. THEN, I picked him up from school on the Monday before, and he was carrying this paper all in Hanzi (Chinese characters) – yep, I can’t read that. Shocking, I know.

So, as we walked to market and back, I looked and listened for ANYONE that was speaking ANY English No luck. Then, as we got on the elevator at our apartment complex a couple walked in that spoke English really well!! Thank you FATHER! The man said that a parent needed to accompany the child to school the next morning at 9:30 for games and New Years fun! School would be only a half day, then no school Wednesday. That was helpful to know since that meant that David and I would need to rearrange our class time as well so we could go!:)

Here are some pics from that day at Colt’s school. It was funny because the first game he played, he didn’t win. . . but they obviously favored him and gave him the prize! Oh my. I didn’t know what to do because I didn’t want to offend them or make them lose face (new concept for me and a really big deal in this culture). . . plus my Chinese isn’t near good enough to talk through that situation. Colt was confused too because he knew he didn’t win. As we walked through the school to various stations of games all the kids were saying, “Hello Colt Hello Colt!!” It made my heart happy to see that everyone genuinely seemed to like him

Then, when we were leaving, he turned in his tickets for a prize. He only had 4 tickets. . . he should have only received 1 little prize from the “4-ticket section” of prizes. BUT AGAIN, the teachers were showering him with gifts and he walked out with 2 toys, 1 stuffed animal, and a pack of markers. Oh dear. Teaching opportunities all around.