Parent Messaging Group

Way back towards the beginning of the school year, I attended Ryley's class parent meeting. It wasn't the meet-everyone-and-bond time that I had hoped it would be (at that point we had been in Taiwan for about 6 weeks and I was still feeling pretty desperate for acceptance) but it did prove its worth: I got on a list to be added to the parent "Line" messaging group.

With my acceptance to this phone app invite, I entered into a world of messaging like I'd never known! This group mass texts each other anywhere from 20 to 200 messages per day (especially when there is a parent council project such as Halloween classroom decorations)! My phone turned into a "bling-a-ding-ding" alert fest and I just learned to ignore it. I was tempted to "un-invite" myself from the group on several occasions, but then I saw one other parent do so and noticed that a message popped up saying that she had withdrawn from the group. I knew that would be very bad for my international relations, so I decided to stick with it.

Most of the time I get a notion of what is being discussed based on the crazy use of stickers and it would amuse me to make up stories in my mind of what was being discussed.

The real gem happened, however, when there was an open house, which I wasn't able to attend due to Theo, and some of the parents took photos of the kids and posted them. I made my first post--in English of course--thanking them for the photos. In response there was an onslaught of photos and videos sent!

At one point the photo below was posted so I responded to the sender directly, asking if that was her son in the photo.

I screen captured our little exchange and was tickled pink by it :)