School days

The girls have been attending the Sunrise Montessori school since February. Nina is a Zebra (‘zeeeebra’ as it is pronounced in international speak obviously) and Cass is, well, Cass is a pigeon. I know that after that woman was on telly calling the London rioters ‘feral rats’ last summer I took to using it as (usually) a term of endearment for my own two beloved little pests but I didn’t expect Cass to get put in a whole class full of winged vermin! Perhaps pigeons are viewed more favourably in China than in London? Not sure, anyway, I digress (fancy that).

This is our walk to school:

Cass tries out the exercise machines

Playing aeroplanes

School carnival

For this event each class (Elephants, Pandas, Kangarous, Lions, Herissons, Tigers, Zebras, Papillons and, yes, the unfortunately named Pigeons) had to do a little parade and dance to a song of presumably the teachers’ choosing. This resulted in sights I never in all my days would have predicted I’d see in China: toddlers dressed as puppies dancing to ‘who let the dogs out’; 3 year olds in Angry Birds costumes; and, perhaps strangest of all, a class full of Mickey and Minnie mouses (mice?).

The assistant headteachers introduce the festivites

The pigeon puppies

Cass's class minus Cass because she was ill

The parents

As anyone who knows Nina would guess, she was not terribly impressed by this turn of events. Despite the best efforts of her lovely Chinese teachers, Penny and Tina, to get her into the spirit of things she remained resolutely grumpy, quite an achievement in the circumstances really!

If you look closely you can see a little grumpy mouse absolutely determined not to join in

Anyway, she cheered up in time to have a snuggle with her teachers:

Nina with Penny (left) and Tina

And with the lovely Lars, dressed as a strong man for his skit with the Tigers

 Later Nina drew a heartbreaking picture of herself alone on a huge empty stage crying:

Public performance really isn’t her thing, poor darling. The other day,  in her first episode of naughtiness at school (but not last as it turns out, yesterday she got sent out for putting her fingers in her ears whilst the teacher was explaining the ‘proper way to wash your hands’ to stave of Hand Foot and Mouth disease) she got sent out of the classroom for refusing to practice the Children’s Day dance the class is preparing . Guess where the naughty ones get sent? The pigeons classroom!

Nina and her co-Zebras

The girls seem to really love school and it’s lovely to see them playing with kids from all over the world, learning Chinese, making dumplings, learning Chinese kung fu and generally having a whale of a time. Nina has had her ups and downs with it, unsurprisingly. We’ve had more than a few mornings of crying and not wanting to go. Thankfully these are almost always followed by her skipping home from school full of stories of the day and what she got up to with Kyle, Oscar, Yu Lu Wen, Raphael and Wang Su Ai. The turning point for her seemed to be when we got back from our two week holiday. She was beside herself worrying that she would feel new again and no-one would remember her and that her shyness would return with full force. When it didn’t it seemed to confirm for her that Sunrise is where she belongs, there’s a place for her there. In fact for all of us, returning to Shanghai and discovering that it felt like coming home was a bit of a watershed moment.

It’s harder to tell how Cass is taking things, she’s too little to really articulate what she’s feeling and not quite as demonstrative with her negative feelings as Nina is (or she doesn’t have as many of them and as many worries as Nina, that’s a moot point). All signs point towards her enjoying herself and loving her teacher Sandi though:

A poorly Cass with teacher Sandi

For Cass though, no-one compares to Wang. The reason I am sitting here writing this right now is because as soon as we got home from school she was off with ayi. This is wonderful for her and I love that she has connected with her so well. Can’t help feeling a little redundant though!

Last week it was the school field trip and we went to this crazy place: Shanghai sculpture park complete with an artificial beach, artificial treehouse and lots of bona fide space for running around in and sculptures to clamber on.

Those palm trees are fake!

That's all for now folks, I'm working myself up to starting a weekly round-up just to force myself to actually post something. In summary we love Shanghai, we miss everyone terribly, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet.x