Homeschooling a German Curriculum in China

I know! Could it be more complicated? (Actually some days it feels even more complicated than that!)

Some of you are familiar with our struggle as we have tried to find a solution to deal with the costs of the schools here. In most situations, families have their schooling paid for by their employer so their choices are a  bit less complicated. We have not had that luxury but the fact remains that it is time for Conrad to start Kindergarten. **Where did the last 5 1/2 years go??**

Interestingly, in our research into schools that we could consider, in January we learned that the German School is the cheapest of the International schools here in Shanghai. And it fits some of our most important criteria:

1. Having the children learn German finally realizes a long standing family goal which enables them to develop a connection to their Swiss family and heritage
2. It fits the budget (while it is still 5 times what we would be paying for Holy Cross in Indy, the sticker shock is nonetheless staggering!)

So with a huge sense of relief that we had a plan, we began the process of applying. The first step, (after filling out the application, of course) was to have Conrad sit for the language entrance exam. Yes, my five year old has already experienced a school entrance exam! Knowing that his ability was not high enough to meet the school's requirements (it is not a bi-lingual school), this Spring we found a number of formal lesson opportunities and eventually were lucky enough to engage the services of a wonderful young German lady named Rebecca, currently living in Shanghai and working as a tutor and AuPair. We worked until the end of the school year, putting off the entrance exam as long as we could, knowing that every hour Conrad spent with Rebecca would bring us closer to a successful outcome. We also knew putting it off had a potential price: the dreaded wait-list! Conrad sat for the exam at the end of June. At the end of the session the team that tested him acknowledged that he had made great progress since they first met him, but they have had to raise the standards of their exam as they are desperately trying to figure out how to accomodate the 150 applications received for the 50 spots that the Kindergarten provides. Ouch. Take a deep breath, try to focus forward. In a long discussion with the school about our options after the exam (of which I only caught about 25%, as my own German is not yet up to snuff for such matters) we decided on a course of action: with Rebecca's help we could homeschool Conrad in German until a space opens up. The catch is that with such a glut of applications (the number of German families in Shanghai is obviously rising!) it is a distinct possibility that spaces may not be available until the following year when there are then 100 spots for the First Grade. Regardless, with the support of the school regarding curriculum and some resources, we have chosen the homeschooling route.

I was very worried at first for Conrad because he had been so excited about the German School since we had first gone to visit it; how was I going to tell him now that he couldn't yet go? Again? There are 4 other children in our neighborhood who will be in his class and he has gotten to be friends with them this Spring. Will he feel horribly left out when they all go back to school? Again? But as often happens if you allow yourself not to worry about something too much (not worrying is something I am NOT good at) a reasonable solution will appear. Soon after the exam the topic arose one morning at the breakfast table. Actually it started out as an argument between Conrad and Vivi when he felt the need to point out that the German School was his, only his, not hers. It was as good a time as any to address the subject so I explained to him that right now there was so many kids that want to get in and there isn't enough space for everyone so he would start here with Rebecca, and as soon as there was space, he could join in at the school. Amazingly he thought about it for a moment and shook his head. "Okay. We can do that," he said. Naturally then I worried that he had felt the pressure enough at the exam, as much as we tried to shield him from it, and was now associating that environment with the School, eventually being relieved not to have to go back just yet.      ~It never ends as a parent, does it?~

Mid-summer: we have a plan and Conrad's on board with it! So now time to think more about the actual logisitcs of it all. Where will the "classroom" be? I went to the beloved Ikea, bought some small tables and chairs and we have set up a place in the loft upstairs. Once he saw it, he was very excited.

The "classroom"

We chose a date for the first day and Rebecca told me about the tradition in Germany of the "Schultüte", a practice that dates back over a 100 years. According to Wikipedia "When children in Germany and Austria set off for their first day in school upon entering first grade, their parents and Grandparents present them with a big cardboard cone, prettily decorated and filled with toys and chocolate, candies, school supplies and various other goodies. It is given to children to make this anxiously awaited first day of school a little bit sweeter." Rebecca helped me get ahold of one and I began to fill it up. Eventually the day arrived and Conrad, with Schultute in hand, finally, along with all of the other 5 year olds that I know, started "school".

 der Schüler (the student)

With Miss Rebecca and his other 'classmate'

The busy student at work

We further celebrated the day by inviting some of our neighborhood friends over in the afternoon for ice cream sandwhiches. Our American, Italian, Australian and German friends were able to join us.

It's anybody's guess what language they are speaking to each other!

Later in the day Conrad found another use for his Schultute. Hopefully he won't end up as the class dunce!

Our schedule is everyday from 8:30 to 1:30 and so far it seems to be going well. Rebecca is incredibly creative and he's very excited when she arrives in the morning. And he loves that facts that he a.) gets to sleep later than all of his friends who have to get up for the bus every morning and b.) finishes his day earlier than all of them and can play Legos for almost 2 hours before all of them get home! Life is good~

It has certainly not been an easy road here. I have spent so much of my life in China feeling like the Square Peg, as if we have had to reinvent the wheel in entirely too many situations that should otherwise require no problem solving at all, but I think it will all be alright in the end. When Conrad would occassionally push back  against the German lessons this Spring I tried to point out to him that it will be so exciting for him when he can double his number of friends once he can play with all of the German kids, too. Of all the languages spoken in our neighborhood, German comes in second only to English. He liked that idea and has taken it to heart. It is so exciting for me to see him run off in the afternoons with the gang of German boys that roam the neighborhood playing tag and water guns and bike races. And I am enjoying developing friendships with the Moms, and improving my German again finally as well. We have enough extracurriculars but not so many that I can be labeled a Tiger Mom, and I think we have finally found a balance to life here that can be good for all of us. Nearly 2 years in, but we're making it!

The weather is getting cooler, the days are getting shorter: it is truly fall here. I hope you are all well and have had an exciting start to your school year as well. We miss you and send all of our love and hugs~

August 1st - a Swiss Celebration

Please allow me to introduce to you two of Switzerland's newest citizens:

I promise you, they are happier about it than they look in this photo!
As this year was a little extra special (we received word of Vivi's paperwork being completed just last week) we decided to have a little party to celebrate Switzerland's Indpendence Day, August 1st. In the past we have always been so fortunate to participate in the awesome activities hosted by the Swiss Club of Central Indiana, but this year we were on our own.

The history of Swiss Independence dates back to the Federal Charter of 1291. This year Switzerland is 721 years old! Happy Birthday Confoederatio Helvetica!

We started the day in our Switzerland shirts, waving our flags, having breakfast with Daddy. Then he had to go to work-seems silly that SwissLog China doesn't observe the most important Swiss holiday with a day off for its local employees! We passed some time playing the iPad apps "Name the Canton Flags" (I don't mean to brag but Mommy can score 26 of 26 in less than 1:00!) and "Coin-Rolling", in which players try to keep a five franc coin rolling around an earthenware bowl, which eventually resonates with a continuous humming tone. Then it was on to the main attraction: the water sports! (The Swiss are known for their water sports, right?) Seemingly unrelated, we recently participated in a focus group for one of the pool makers here in China, Bestway, which makes most of the inflatable pools sold in the States and as a result got a free backyard paddling pool! Perfect for the festivities! But filling it up was quite a challenge. Our hose attachment is quite, er, Chinese so when turned on strong enough to get the water out the other end, 70% of the water was shooting straight up into the air. Time to do my MacGyver act!

A dishtowel on the faucet to funnel the offshoot, a few buckets to make a brigade, two goofball children and we're on our way! Problem solved; the pool was full in 20 minutes instead of 2 hours! 

Which left me just enough time to finish decorating and setting the table with all of the snacks.

The guest list was quite varied: our German AuPair, a British family, an Australian family and a friend from New Zealand. Sadly the invited French and Chinese families were unable to join us. A few of the kids colored the flags we made for them but mostly they all just ran around the backyard and shot each other with water guns! We had a wonderful time with wurstsalat and cheeses for lunch and ice cream sandwiches for dessert.

Unfortunately, as always happens when I play hostess, I pretty much forgot the camera duties so much of the festivities remain undocumented. Maybe next year some of you can join us, when I hopefully celebrate my own (dual) citizenship. First I have to pass that background check...

Happy First of August to you all~

Ode to a Friend

Rest gently, my sweet boy. You were a brave soul, Barney. You are greatly missed.

Last November we discovered an ominous growth in Barney's mouth. We had it removed and, sure enough, the biopsy (by a German testing company, if that matters) determined it was cancer, a particularly agressive canine type. So the clock started ticking. And the realization that he would not make that 14 hour journey back to the States with us again settled in. 

At that time I happened to be reading "Peony In Love" by Lisa See. In it the main character spends about 2/3 of the book as a ghost. Although this was not my first exposure to the beliefs of the Chinese regarding death, it was one of the most comprehensive. Many Chinese believe that there are 3 levels of afterlife that the soul must travel and basically the success of your journey is directly related to the actions of your surviviors after you pass on. Kinda frustrating, huh? Without their help you cannot continue to the next level. You may have seen stories or pictures of Chinese burning "money", "clothing" and "food" during memorial and funeral services. This is because they believe that the soul needs all of these things to live in the next life, as in the current one, but can only obtain these things through ancestor worship. (Lately there have been stories of people burning effigies of iPads and iPhones!)

Through the inattentiveness of Peony's parents (not due to their grief I might add), her funeral rites are not performed correctly and she is doomed to forever inhabit the wasteland of the first afterlife. Her description of the world in which she now lives is incredibly bleak and hopeless: her clothing is in tatters, she is starving and her loved ones don't seem to remember her at all. As she describes this miserable existence, numerous times she mentions the mongrel dogs also cursed to languish forever in the first realm, starving, mangy strays sleeping in the cold. Unloved, just like her.

There is never an explanation why the dogs are this way in this Chinese version of what happens after, but it stuck with me. If we live in China now, are we subjected to their beliefs regarding what comes next? We will not live here forever but if Barney passes away here, what happens to him when we leave? Will he become a mongrel stray, starving and freezing in the next life? I never had to worry about these things in Indiana. I could leave him "behind" if we were in Australia or Switzerland. I can't leave him behind in China!

The good news is that we shared 8 more months with him after the initial diagnosis. Sweet fuzzy face. And when the end came it was fast and without question that the time had come. It was a sad, but not an agonizing decision. For this I am grateful. I am also grateful that we will be able to have him cremated so when we do leave China he can come with us. Maybe he will be returned to his yard in Indianapolis. Maybe we will have to find another permanent solution. All that matters to me is he will not be left behind. 

Godspeed my friend. I hope you stay well-fed and warm on your next journey. You started out as a stray but you are well-loved in this life~

Does China have the Fourth of July?

The challenge of helping your children maintain a sense of their home culture's identity when you live in a foreign land was weighing especially heavily on my mind this year. With all that we had going on last week with school entrance exams it had escaped me that it is actually July already. So I was a bit unprepared for how to celebrate the 4th.

Last year you may remember we had a big party with our friends from the neighborhood but last year's holiday was a Monday, easy enough to celebrate on a Sunday, the day before. With the actual day falling on a Wednesday, it's very easy for it to get lost in the local shuffle. An American neighbor of ours is having a barbecue but all of the invited guests speak French so she apologized that she could not invite us as well as she thought we would be a bit uncomfortable. True. So with Heinz away in Australia for work and all of our other American friends away, the kids and I are on our own. 

I decided that at 5 1/2 Conrad is old enough to understand a bit about History so we pulled out a globe and talked a little bit about the story of American Independence. I think the best part about having kids is that when you have to revisit topics that you think you know and study them to understand how to present them to childrens' minds, it gives you a fresh perspective. At first I found my little history lesson leading us down the Pilgrim's path and I thought "Oh great! Some history teacher I am; my children will forever have Thanksgiving Day and Independence Day confused!" So instead I changed course and used the "Big Brother Bullying the Little Brother" angle, where Little Brother got tired of Big Brother always imposing more rules and taking more and more of Little Brother's allowance until Little Brother said "Enough! I want to be independent!" Like I said, I'm no History teacher! But I think they got the jist. We talked a bit about Britain, home of our friends Charlie, Henry and Miss Lisa, and with our recent celebration of the Queen's Jubilee, it all had a lot of unexpected layers. (The good news for everyone is that we are friends with Britain now!) I told them about the Pledge of Allegiance. I sang some songs for them. Vivienne liked America the Beautiful the best so we turned on the VPN and found some videos of patriotic songs on YouTube. As usual I teared up over the National Anthem.

We did a United States puzzle on the iPad and talked about how Old Glory has 13 stripes and 50 stars, and why. I drew some flags and we colored them.

While we were coloring them Conrad said "I wish I had a t-shirt with a Flag on it."
My first response was the simple truth: "It's pretty hard to find shirts with the American Flag on them in China." But then, my creative juices flowing, I got an idea. And my blue and red Sharpies. 

Instant flag t-shirt! (Who needs Old Navy?) So today we are all wearing our colors, even me!

Of course China has the 4th of July, as the old joke goes; every calendar does. But Americans are the only ones for whom it has such great importance. For us it is The Fourth, in capital letters. We haven't got any fun fireworks this year and will miss the beautiful show over the Indianapolis skyline, viewed from the comfort of our own backyard but we've learned some things and had some fun. How did you celebrate this year?

Happy Fourth to you all. Freedom, Independence, Love and Peace. We wish these for you all~

Summer Toes! (And where they might lead you...)

Summer has arrived in Shanghai with hot, hot days and sandals. Two weeks ago I was out and about and found this great confetti/metallic nail polish and thought to myself "This would be great for my toes for the summer!" (Those of you who know me, stop laughing. It is not that unthinkable that I might actually paint my nails sometimes!)

So I took it home and started putting it on and a certain little girl wandered over and said "Mommy, your toes are so pretty!" Hmmm, I'm sensing an opportunity here. So I said to her "Vivi, would you like your toes to be pretty too?"

"Yes!" she said, so we got started.

She was very patient waiting for them to dry and really enjoyed the final product!

Summer Toes!

Could it be? Underneath Cousin Zachary's hand me down Soccer t-shirts (as seen in the pictures above), Conrad's old jeans and neighbor Gabriel's cast off tennis shoes might we find... a   g-i-r-l??? (Grammy and Aunties can keep your mouths shut here about hereditary natures...) I was afraid to hope. I thought we had lost the plot earlier this week when I tried to suggest that she wear the adorable pink skort from Aunt Fran. It's probably already too small but it obviously hasn't had enough wear so I brought it out and when she saw it she screamed at me "No! That's pretty!" And that's bad why? "I want cool!" 

I'm not sure where to go with that, have tried to convince her that pretty and cool CAN coexist, but as you know with toddlers, some days are better than others. Well, hope surged anew when she came downstairs this morning very proud of her clothing selection for the day:

The first dress she has worn in over 18 months!

From summer toes to a summer dress. My tomboy is showing her feminine side!

Happy summer to you all~

Sleeping in Shanghai

You've all heard of "Sleepless in Seattle", right? Well, on the other side of the world the polar opposite happens everyday, far outside of what one would expect from a regular sleep schedule. One thing I have learned in my time here is that the Chinese seem to have a unique ability to sleep ANYTIME, and ANYPLACE. So much so that Bernd Hagemann, a German who has lived in Shanghai for nearly 10 years has devoted an entire website to the pictures he has captured in that time. If you have a few moments and need a good laugh, I recommend that you check it out: www.sleepingchinese.com

Unfortunately for me I don't usually have my camera handy when I see some of the more bizarre circumstances. Last Tuesday however, I did. I was on my way into our local superstore to do some grocery shopping and passed by the nail salon stall out front. 

And saw this:
I don't even know where to go from there. It doesn't even look comfortable!

I hope you are all well and getting enough sleep~

A Diamond Jubilee

I've said it before: the best part of living abroad is the exposure the kids get to International culture. The imported foods section of one of our grocery stores has a little flag next to the label/price of each item identifying its country of origin and Conrad and Vivi have a lot of fun looking at them, identifying some, naming the friends they have from each country, what languages they might speak and on and on. (Who needs Pre-School?) But mostly it is a lot of fun to learn about their friends' cultures from their friends themselves.

Some of you may or may not have noticed that this past weekend was the 60th Anniversary of the Coronation of the Queen of England. Not an event my children would normally have celebrated in our life in Indianapolis but, as you know Toto, we don't exactly live in Indianapolis anymore.

One of our weekly highlights is a standing playdate with some friends on Tuesday afternoons. One of the families, my friend Lisa and her boys, is British and as they had offered to host this week Lisa decided to use it as an opportunity to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. We started with a yummy chocolate cake made by one of the other British mums. All of the flags decorations were made by Lisa and her boys.

Vivienne plays in the Royal paddling pool under the bunting of Union Jacks.

Conrad decorates his crown.

His official coronation!

Vivienne makes a crown and a Union Jack~

Queen Vivi asks: Badminton on the lawn, anyone?

The Royal subjects pose for photos;

(Lollipops for anyone who stands pretty for the picture!)

After dinner and bath that night I turned on the tv to find the BBC's live footage of the Queen's motorcade heading to her luncheon at St. Paul's Cathedral. I asked "who wants to see the Queen?" and Vivi and Conrad came running to watch. I was trying to explain to them what a motorcade is when Vivienne asked "Is that the Queen in the front on the motorcycle?"

All in all, it was a really fun day. The kids enjoyed all of the activities and I enjoyed chatting with the British mums, as they shared their "Do you remember the Silver Jubilee?" stories and sang some of the songs appropriate for the occassion. At 84 years old, Queen Elizabeth is an amazing woman. Congratulations to her on this momentous occasion~