"If" given enough encouragement...

 Julien was all good to go to school on Friday. Thank goodness! I think it helped that we had written out a couple of action plans and reward incentive contracts and given him a few extra hours of sleep :) Now, If given the possibility of earning 10 stars at the end of each day at school (normally stars are given out 1 or maybe 2 at a time based on desirable behaviors like making a bed or using good apartment lobby etiquette) along with a few other perks added for these first couple weeks, Julien seems quite happy to go. I think he's enjoying all the social time too. It's also amazing how caring and attentive all the teachers and staff are--it has to feel good for him to be basking in their love! 

We are all feeling the "special" factor of being the only foreigners at the school. Even with my limited Chinese, I've been able to understand a few parents telling their child that "that's the mama of Julien" as they smile and nod in my direction. I've seen the mama of Jeff (all the kids have an English name in addition to their Chinese name) picking up her son about the same time as I do every day. It was really sweet to hear her rehearsed "nice to meet you" phrase on the 3rd day we saw each other--before that our exchanges were mainly non-verbal :)


Here is Julien's If Kindergarten backpack and his 3 rice bowls with spoons for eating his school breakfast, lunch and snack. Like all typical kids, his report of the day is mainly centered on what good food he got to eat. It's funny to hear him describe some of the foods he's not familiar with. Apparently I need to learn how to make a "purplish-orangish" soup.






This is the correspondence notebook that they send home with Julien every day...












...this is what it says inside. As you can clearly see, it informs me something about his eating time, class time, napping time and social behavior. I greatly appreciated that token indication of what was being communicated. In acknowledgment of that appreciation, I decided to sign my name on a line that looked like it wanted a signature, thereby attesting to the fact I had seen said information. Not that I had understood any of it!

The following day Joanne had an insert taped in the front with an English translation of it all :) Guess that will help my signature mean a bit more in the future.



This is the highlight of our walk home from Kindergarten: one of the shops has this aquarium right up against its street side. The boys have already named a lot of their fishy friends and enjoy visiting them every day. It's hard to drag them away.









We've decided that at every grocery store run (of which we have several each week) we're going to buy something that we have absolutely no idea what it is. Here is such a fruit. I'll eventually get back to you about what it's called. I don't think we'll be buying it often, however. No one really cared much for this one. Live and learn.

And finally, here's Ryley with a few more teeth gone. He decided he would lose a couple this week and test out the theory that the tooth-fairy, like Santa Clause, can find you anywhere in the world. Just to be on the safe side, however, he did write her a note specifying that he wanted NT$ rather than US$ seeing as how he couldn't spend the latter over here. This child is so good at covering his bases!