a week and two days

I was reflecting last week that it had been a pretty quiet week, and wondered why I hadn't gotten more done.  Then I thought about it some more and realized that actually, we had had a few out-of-the-ordinary events.  And that was before last weekend hit.  So here is what happened in a week and two days.

Friday, September 16: Tim's birthday!  Tim has been dreaming of putting a game table (most likely pool or ping-pong) in our basement since the day we chose this house, and was talking about how much he'd love to own one even before that.  So we took the plunge and ordered a convertible pool/ping-pong table, to arrive on his birthday.  It is not full-size, but it's just for fun, and it's plenty big enough for that!  The table came in the morning, so Tim and Esther got started on putting it together.  Tim had to teach labs all afternoon, followed by a meeting, so he came home a little late.  By this time Daniel was home and eager to work on a project (he loves projects!).  So Tim and Daniel continued the work of putting the table together while I made Tim's special-request birthday dinner, a dish he invented and calls cheesy chicken and rice.  (It's chicken cut into bite-size pieces and fried with garlic and salt, then stirred together with shredded cheddar cheese and brown rice.  Yum!)  For dessert, gluten-free yellow cake with strawberry icing.  Esther apparently likes that recipe, because she ate more of it than I've ever seen her eat of a cake before.

Saturday, September 17:  In honor of National Gymnastics Day, Esther's gym put on an exhibition at the mall.  Esther's class went through a warm-up routine and then showed off some of the moves they have been learning.  Esther is one of the best at doing the moves, but still needs some work on paying attention to what she is supposed to be doing!  She loved all of the attention and excitement and was awfully cute, even dancing for a while to the music they had on, and doing cartwheels off over by herself when her class wasn't doing anything.  The more advanced classes also demonstrated their warm-ups and some of their skills, and the team gymnasts performed routines.  A couple of the girls (daughters of the gym owners) are performing rhythmic gymnastics at level 9, the highest level.  It was super cool to watch them!  I kept thinking that this was a level of performance I would normally only get to see on TV, and here I was sitting on the floor five feet away!  Esther loved watching everything--she has long had ambitions to be like "the big girls," and is now bugging me non-stop for gymnastics shoes and a ribbon.  :-)  She already has a hoop, which she is practicing throwing and catching like the big girls.  Daniel was bored out of his gourd, felt that we were showing rank favoritism to Esther by spending so long on her activity when we had never spent so long watching him do something (never mind that we haven't had the opportunity yet!), and alternated between grouching at me and sleeping with his head in my lap.  At one point when Esther got up from my lap to go talk to somebody, he got ready to take over her spot--more, I think, as an act of territoriality than as an act of affection, although there are times at home when he does like to sit in my lap just to be close to me.  Except for his attitude, it was a really fun afternoon.

Tuesday, September 20:  We had a Chinese student from Tim's university over for dinner.  Last year there was no student from China there; this year she is the only one.  She is a little bit of a non-traditional student, who has already been working for several years but wants to further her skills in graphic design and is doing so by taking classes in the U.S.  She chose this university because she knew there were not many Chinese people in the area and she would be forced to speak English.  Our dinner-table conversation was partly in English and partly in Chinese.  She and Daniel at one point bonded over imitating friends who speak with a "Dongbei" accent ("Dongbei" means "Northeast," but apparently when you're talking about accents it refers to something quite specific, not just someone who hails from the northeastern part of China).  Esther was very zealous for "auntie's" attention.  At one point Esther got down from her chair, walked over to auntie's seat, took her hair in one hand and auntie's in the other and compared them.  Ever since we moved to this area Esther has been very aware of anyone else who has black hair like her.

Thursday, September 22:  Tim's university had their annual parade as part of homecoming weekend.  Various community organizations marched in the parade, including Esther's gym.  So she was invited to come march and throw candy.  Parents were allowed to march along with smaller kids.  Then Daniel said that he wanted to march too, and I figured it would be okay, so all four of us came to the gathering place.  It turned out that they needed someone to carry the sign, so Daniel and I volunteered for that job, while Tim marched with Esther.  It was fun!  Although unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera.  I especially enjoyed looking at the creative costumes of the college student organizations in the parade, and watching the older gymnasts flip their way down the street.  Esther loved throwing candy, and apparently went through it all before they had gone very far.  Towards the end of the parade she did a little dance for the crowd.  (I didn't see this, but Tim told me.)  When we got to the ending point, we got off the road into the grass and watched the rest of the parade go by.  Daniel especially loved the fire engines rolling by blaring their sirens and throwing candy out the windows.  Afterwards we got to talk to a play-date friend of Esther's and to our Chinese student friend.  I overheard Daniel asking her what she thinks about learning English, and whether she thinks it's difficult.

Saturday, September 24, morning:  Our town has an annual festival.  There are some booths up and down the main street, and rides set up in the post office parking lot.  I took Esther last year, and she had been talking about it ever since.  So this year I took both kids, while Tim stayed home to work.  Even a month ago I'm not sure I would have dared to take both kids out to an exciting environment by myself, but it went great!!  Daniel was rather impatient about me stopping to talk to people that we met among the booths, but once we got to the rides he was a very happy camper.  The first one he picked was a sort of ferris wheel shape, but it goes around much faster and you can swing your seat back and forth and even do a complete flip in it.  Then he went on a super-fast rotating ride with Esther (I went with her on it last year, and was quite happy not to repeat the experience!), and then back to the ferris wheel.  Esther did her rotating ride, then a stint in the bounce house, and then a different rotating ride.  (I remember those days when I actually liked being dizzy...but they are long gone!)  Then she really, really, really wanted one more ride, so she used her own money to buy tickets for a ride where you sit in a swing and then the ride goes around and around and the swings fly out sideways.  Meanwhile, Daniel's middle school band had a scheduled performance around the time we were there, and I cannot tell you how many kids yelled out, "Hi Daniel!!"  He truly seems to be popular!  A couple of girls were trying to teach him their names, and asking him if he had seen another student who is a friend of his.  Esther and I saw some people who we knew, as well.

Saturday, September 24, afternoon:  We rushed home from the festival to get ready for an afternoon birthday party that Esther had been invited to.  We had already wrapped the present and painted Esther's fingernails and toenails (it was a teaparty, fancy dress encouraged!), but we had to get her into her dress.  By the time we were ready, it was clear that I didn't have time to cook lunch, so we decided to pick up fast food on our way over.  Well, that didn't happen.  About halfway there, somebody in a gold SUV decided it would be a bright idea to go zipping across the highway and try to enter the cross street before the two cars in front of us, who were both turning right into that same place.  I was just commenting to Tim what a crazy idea that was when--BOOM--we heard the sound of the gold SUV crunching into the driver-side door of the first of the two turning vehicles.  Tim swerved as far left as he could to try to get away and ahead of the accident.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a large object approaching, and then the second of the turning vehicles collided into Daniel's door.  By the time I registered what was happening, it was already over, and I knew we were all okay (it had just felt like a hard bump).  Tim pulled over to the shoulder on the other side of the highway and checked out the situation, and then we resigned ourselves to waiting while everything got sorted out.  Amazingly, no-one in any of the vehicles seemed to be seriously hurt.  The driver of the first turning car, a red SUV, was complaining of arm pain, but otherwise all right.  Everyone else was able to get out of their vehicles and walk around.  A person who had witnessed the accident but not been involved waited with the driver of the red SUV and talked to her to help keep her calm.  We used our cellphone to leave a message for birthday friend's mom, letting her know that everyone was fine but we might not make it to the party.  Eventually firefighters showed up, cut the driver's-side door off of the red SUV, and took the driver away in a neck brace (I think just as a precautionary measure).  Another woman appeared near the gold SUV and the group of unhappy looking young men who had piled out of it.  A woman with magenta hair arrived and put her arm around the driver of the car that had hit us, who was looking quite distraught.  Two police cars showed up with sirens blaring and an officer started getting down everybody's registration information and recording our accounts of events.  At some point in these proceedings a tow truck had come.  The driver came to look our car over, asked Tim what year it was, and commented, "They may just decide to total it."  What?!?  So we started taking everything out of our car, just in case.  Esther's friend's mom called back to see how we were and to offer any assistance, including borrowing her car.  Once we knew that we were not going to be driving anywhere in ours, we called her back and asked if she could possibly pick us up.  I hated to do that in the middle of a birthday party, but we absolutely did not know anyone else's phone number.  She graciously agreed, and so after all the emergency vehicles had gone on their way and the other people involved in the accident had been picked up, we stood by the side of the road in a pile of our random car stuff and waited for our ride.  The tow truck driver kindly waited with us.  The kids were champs throughout this whole ordeal (especially considering that we hadn't eaten lunch!)  Daniel was pretty shook up--he had been sleeping before the accident occurred, and woke up to loud noises and sensations of swerving and bumping.  But he acted calm, followed directions, and was a huge help getting all of our stuff out of the car and making sure Esther stayed away from the road.  Esther was cheerfully interested in the whole thing, although she did start complaining of hunger during the latter part of our wait.  Eventually, our friend arrived to pick us up, and we went on to the birthday party for a brief while before borrowing her car and heading back home to make insurance phone calls.  And boy, did we enjoy the heart-shaped chicken salad sandwiches, the cheese cubes, the strawberries and the cupcakes!  Although it was an unpleasant experience, and is continuing to be so, I am mostly thankful.  Thankful that we are all okay.  Thankful for a stranger who cared enough to stay and keep a rattled driver calm, and help the police sort out what happened.  Thankful for a friend who left in the middle of her own child's birthday party! to pick us up by the side of the road, and who moreover let us use her car until we could get a rental figured out.  Thankful for the other mom at the birthday party who watched all seven kids while our friend was picking us up (I didn't even know when I asked that favor that Dad wasn't home).  Thankful for the mom of Esther's former daycare buddy who happened to drive past us and turned around to come back and check on us.  Thankful for the tow truck drivers who wouldn't leave us to wait alone.  And thankful that we have insurance.  (The driver of the gold SUV, as far as anybody can tell, did not.  Nor are they making themselves easy to find.)

Sunday, September 25:  A family at our church sponsored a youth outing, which mostly ended up being their kids, but Daniel and another church friend of his went along.  Daniel was so excited that he was practically dancing in the parking lot before they left!  It was his first ever outing without us, except for school, so it was a big deal.  And it went well!  They went for a buffet lunch (I heard that Daniel was particularly fond of the ice-cream bar, no surprise!), waded in a waterfall, rode the cable car at a state park, and stopped at Dairy Queen on the way back.  Daniel tried to buy a soft drink at a vending machine and got back more change than he put in, so he got all excited and turned most of his paper money (that we had given him for the trip) into coins in hopes that it would happen again.  Later, at Dairy Queen, he had a hard time picking out which flavor of blizzard to get, so the adults had him try a bite of their youngest son's blizzard, leading younger son to burst into tears.  So Daniel quickly dug out fifty cents and bought younger son a treat, making everybody happy again.  Daniel told me at the end of the day that he had had a really good time.

And there you have it: two birthday celebrations, a gymnastics exhibition, a new friend, a parade, a festival, a car accident, and an outing, all in a week and two days.

grandparent visit

My parents arrived for their first visit with Daniel last Sunday, which just happened to be Grandparents Day!  They were supposed to arrive on Saturday, but a delayed plane left them stranded in Philadelphia overnight.  :-(  Both kids were sick; Esther had been dragging around with a cold for a week, but was mostly acting like herself, while Daniel had picked up some stomach bug that made him horribly dizzy and was crawling around the house instead of walking.  (A side note on Daniel: he didn't feel like eating from Friday afternoon till Saturday afternoon, but then he broke his "fast" with several handfuls of potato chips, a tomato, and a bowl of ice-cream.  He's a teenager all right!)  So Sunday afternoon my parents mostly played with Esther while Daniel lay flat on his tummy and watched Chinese cartoons on the laptop.  I kept him home from school on Monday, both to make sure he was recovered and to give him some grandparent time.  He slept in and woke up unsure of whether or not he was better, but some airplane toys brought about a miraculous recovery and he was able to enjoy the rest of the day.  He especially enjoyed a shopping trip with Grandpa, which yielded one of the desires of his heart: a wireless computer mouse!  He is still rejoicing in that; he thinks it's great fun to be able to adjust the volume on his cartoons from five feet away.  On Monday evening we celebrated Mid-Autumn Day (aka Moon Festival) by eating a yummy Chinese meal followed by mooncakes, and looking at the moon.  Daniel made a call or two to China to wish people a happy festival and discovered that most of his friends in China had been unable to see the moon because of cloud cover.  We, however, had a spectacular bright full moon to enjoy.  My parents had to leave on Tuesday morning, so it was a short visit.  But it was good for them to be able to meet Daniel, and for him to now know who I am talking about when I talk about them!  Esther, of course, loved having them here as well.  She was so sad when they left that she told me, "Mommy, I think I'm going to cry!"

Along with my parents came: my dad's camera!  So we finally have some good-quality pictures of our kids.  Our own camera, now repaired, came back to us in the mail the day my parents left.  But in the meantime, my dad managed to take over 300 pictures during the less-than-48-hours that they were here.  Here are some of them, for your viewing pleasure!  Note Esther's chopstick technique in the dinner picture: it looks bizarre, but she actually manages to get food into her mouth.  The red box next to Daniel in the following picture is a box of mooncakes, and he is holding up the half-mooncake that he's eating.  In the last picture, that's my dad riding a scooter with Esther.  Go, Grandpa, go!!  :-)

Their debut

Both kids love to sing.  Daniel tells us that he started performing when he was about Esther's age, maybe even a little younger.  He got a friend in China to e-mail him a file of him singing at about age four--too cute!!  Esther has never been in a formal music program, but she often sings around the house and has a pleasant voice.  She also loves to go up on stage at church after the service and dance with her friend E or talk or sing into the microphones.  So when our church had a "singspiration" night, I signed both kids up.  Esther was to sing "Children, children," a sweet little song from one of her Donut Hole videos, and Daniel prepared "Qing Qing Ting" ("Quietly, Quietly Listen"), a Chinese worship song that has been a favorite of Tim's and mine since we first heard it some years ago.  Tim prepared to accompany Daniel on the guitar.  Then when we did our sound check at church, Daniel asked me to sing with him.

When we got to the night of the performances, Esther got up on stage, took one look at the number of people waiting to hear her, and lay down on the floor, not to arise under her own steam and definitely not to sing.  So I picked Esther up and we moved on to Daniel's song.  Tim played the guitar, Daniel and I sang, and Esther joined in on our second time through.  So it was a real family affair, and a neat opportunity to share something together.  Several people commented afterwards that hearing the song in Chinese really spoke to them.  One person said, "I don't know what heaven will be like when people of all languages come together to praise God, but this makes me wonder about it."

I don't have any pictures, unfortunately.  We dropped our camera in Guangzhou and are just getting around to getting it fixed, so all summer I've been relying on the still picture capacity of our video camera.  That's okay for outdoors, but indoor pictures come out so grainy that I didn't even bother.  We do have video, though, and I'm sure we'll look back someday and really enjoy seeing our children in their American debut!

And, the other side of the coin

Remember my concerns about Daniel waiting for the bus in the afternoons, and the kids that he was making laugh?

Well, we got a call from the school yesterday saying that they had found out that some kids were coaching Daniel to say some very inappropriate words and to use some inappropriate gestures.  The school administration and teachers were not happy that any of their students would do this.  Their take was that it was harassment, since kids were singling out Daniel because he doesn't speak English.  I'm still thinking about that one.  On the one hand, the kids were "using" Daniel for their own entertainment, and their actions did meet the definition of harassment in the student handbook.  But when I think of harassment I think of an intent to make the victim scared or uncomfortable, and I suspect the spirit of their actions was rather more like when Daniel eggs Esther on to say "fart" in Chinese and then they both giggle like maniacs.  Only in this case, the words and gestures he was being coached in could get him beat up if he used them in the wrong circumstances.  In any case, the entire seventh-grade class got an earful from their 5th period teachers about how inappropriate it is to be teaching someone who can't speak a language to say words that could get them in trouble, and how that is not going to be tolerated at this school.  And there are teeth in the threat: any student caught in the act of teaching inappropriate vocabulary or gestures will get an out-of-school suspension.

Meanwhile, suspecting that much of the problem was occurring in the bus waiting room, Tim rearranged his work schedule so that we could pick Daniel up directly from school.  He was very surprised to find us waiting outside his classroom when the bell rang.  Of course he wanted to know why.  I gave him a brief explanation then, and let him think about it while we drove home.  Later we had a more serious talk.  He at first protested the thought that he could bear any responsibility ("How was I supposed to know what they were saying?  I don't understand English!"), but it turned out that he had a pretty good idea when it was happening (in the bus waiting room and on the bus) and who was instigating it.  He suspected that the words he was being taught were not "good" ones, but people laughed when he said them and that was fun.  He also told me that his bus seat mate, the first person he described to me as a "friend" at his new school, has been telling him "NO" when he repeats something that he shouldn't say.  So he is not without allies among the student body--in fact, my feeling is that he has a lot more allies than there are mischief-makers--he just needs to learn to exercise some judgement in who he chooses to go along with!  That's a life lesson that he could be learning from much more difficult and dangerous experiences than the one he's going through right now.  At the end of our talk he asked me if I thought his problem was really big, and I told him that it could be a big problem, but it could also be a good opportunity to learn what people can be like and how to be careful.  Poor kid; it's not an easy lesson or a fun one!  (At one point during our talk he asked me, "Why is being in school so hard?")

So we discussed under what circumstances the words someone is asking you to repeat might be just fine (if you know what the words mean and know they are okay, or if there is a teacher within earshot), and under what circumstances you need to be careful.  I don't want to rob him of the joy of making people laugh, and he is so good at saying funny things in Chinese...but not everything that makes people laugh is good!  I had an LEP meeting at school today, and when I saw Daniel he told me that one of the "usual suspects" on the bus had asked him to say something, but he had answered them in Chinese and then ignored them.  We'll see how this afternoon goes, when he has the long wait before the bus ride.  He actually wanted me to come walk him home from school today (I have offered/threatened to do that if the bus problem continues), but I asked him to ride the bus today so he can try out ignoring those kids.  (Plus there's a chance of thunderstorms.)  I will pick him up tomorrow if he wants me to.

So...I'm thankful for school personnel who take Daniel's well-being seriously, and for real friends who try to keep him from doing harmful things.  And I hope our boy is able to get some good out of this not-so-good situation by learning a lesson that will be easier now than later.

First full week of school

Daniel's first full week of school is over.  A lot has happened!  Here is where we stand now.

Friends:  Daniel has some!  At first when he told me how his friends were instructing him to say things that they thought were funny (like calling girls "boys" and boys "girls") I wondered whether they were real friends or just kids in search of entertainment.  But in fact there have been many kids who have done genuinely friendly things, like making sure he sits in the right place to wait for his school bus, writing information down in choir, and greeting him when they see him.  (I am mildly nonplussed at the number of cute girls who greet him enthusiastically!)  I picked him up in front of the school for a doctor's appointment on Friday, and when we left several kids said "Bye Daniel" and one even said good-bye in Chinese!  He also came home that day with the phone number of a boy who he is friendly with in choir class.  Apparently Daniel's extroverted personality is serving him well at school.  And I think some credit also needs to go to teachers who made an effort to help his classmates understand what a big deal it is for him to be learning to navigate a completely new language and culture.

School bus:  I was really worried about the fact that Daniel's assigned bus does not pick kids up until 20 minutes after the school day ends.  The kids who take "second bus" have to spend those minutes sitting in the gym under the watchful eye of a teacher, and I really didn't think that Daniel could handle 20 minutes of enforced inactivity in the company of peers.  But he was determined he was going to ride the bus as soon as possible, so I let him try it out in both directions on the second day, and it went great!!  He tells me that he has lots of friends on the bus.  I get the impression that he is rather rowdy with said friends.  But that is the bus driver's problem, not mine, and so far I haven't heard anything about it from her.  (It helps, I'm sure, that he's only on the bus for about three minutes.)

Behavior:  We have been working with Daniel on some boundary issues at home.  He just doesn't seem to get that if I ask him to stop doing something (like pulling on my arm hair) that it is my body and my choice and he needs to respect that.  We gave him a lecture the night before school started about Americans and personal space (very different than in China!), and translated for him all of the school rules about "no horseplay" and "no holding hands or hugging other students."  We were concerned about what would happen if he seriously overstepped fellow students' boundaries, especially if he did so repeatedly.  Well, he has had his moments.  Some of them (like picking up another student at recess, or whacking a classmate playfully on the head with a notebook) I have found out about from him; others (like grabbing a girl student by the head and trying to kiss her!) I have found out about from someone else.  But the good news is, I think he is learning!  He talked on the phone with an adult friend/mentor in China last night, and I overheard him saying soberly, "School here is different from China.  There are all kinds of things that you can't do here."  I feel bad for him--he is brimful of enthusiasm, and I think he is used to having fun roughhousing with pals, being really loud, and other "all boy" things that aren't allowed in school and aren't really encouraged in our house.  We may have to think about some appropriate activities that will give him some of what he is missing.  We have been avoiding taking him to the kinds of events where it's okay to be a little wild because we have tried it once or twice where he has gotten...more than a little wild!  But perhaps it's time to try again.  For now, we are just happy that he is aware of the situation that he is in.  We are also happy that he seems to be well-liked by his teachers and fellow students, despite some odd or disruptive behavior.  And I will leave you with a funny vignette.  The very day after I stopped accompanying Daniel to school, he decided to run in the cafeteria (which he knows very well is against the rules).  The new vice-principle, who was on lunch duty, threw up his hand in the universal(?) "stop" sign...and Daniel gave him a high five and kept on going!!

Accommodations: We do not have an official LEP (Limited English Proficiency) plan yet, but Daniel is getting pull-out ESL tutoring for about half-an-hour a day.  The rest of the time he is in regular classes.  His teachers are all really motivated to help him learn, but some of them are feeling really stressed about not being able to communicate class content to him without completely focusing on him to the detriment of other students.  I even got an anonymous phone call from one of his teachers telling me who I should contact at the State level to request an interpreter to accompany him to his classes.  I was led to believe by the county's ESL person that he is actually forbidden to provide an interpreter for classes, so now I am confused.  I'm also not convinced that an interpreter would be in his best interest.  I for sure don't want him spending hours of every day sitting in class understanding nothing, but one of the reasons we sent him to school in the first place is that he is learning so painfully little English at home with me as his interpreter.  Right now I think he is doing fine.  Yes, he has no idea what is being studied, but he seems to be getting a good bit of mental stimulation observing other students, learning academic routines (like writing name and date on papers), and generally soaking up classroom culture.  He has come home using new English words and telling me what he was able to figure out from context about classroom events (a teacher yelling at students because most of them didn't do the homework, a teacher being called out of class to pick up a sick baby), so his brain is not on idle.  A month from now?  Who knows.  It doesn't help that Daniel can't see the blackboard, even from the front row, so he's not getting the visual input that would help a lot of language learners.  We don't have his official vision assessment yet, but our district's vision teacher did an informal assessment on him, and his distance and near vision both came out to somewhere between 20/200 and 20/400.  If he's allowed to look at something at his "preferred distance" (in his case, with his nose about an inch from the paper) he can discern some pretty small print, at an acuity of 20/40.  But that would be fatiguing to his eyes to do for a long period of time.  They have already lent him some adaptive devices to try out.  He didn't think much of the magnifying glasses or the slanted clipboard (which lets him put nose to paper without bending his upper body so far down), but he did like the monocular (like a short telescope).  He loved a device they let him try out in the vision classroom, called a Flipper.  It is a little camera hooked up to a monitor.  You can turn the camera down to focus on a paper you want to read, or out towards the blackboard, or wherever else you want.  Whatever you want to look at shows up magnified on the monitor in front of you.  It would be a bit clunky to cart from class to class, and the school will have to arrange for extra-large desks to be moved into each of his classrooms, but I think he will use it.

Academics:  Daniel is not getting academic content from any of his classes besides ESL.  I think he would have learned more in this week if he had been with me at home.  BUT, my priorities for this year are language, social skills, academic culture, and developing good feelings about learning, and I think he is making progress in all of these areas.  So overall, I'm pleased.

A milestone in language learning

And no, not in Daniel's language learning.  Mine.  

Occasionally I talk in my sleep.  Last night, so Tim tells me, I talked in my sleep in Chinese.  I said "What are you studying?"  And then (in English), "Oh, you're supposed to be studying math."  Guess what I was thinking about before I fell asleep last night?