On Saturday, we attended a wedding of an ex-colleague of Richard's. The ceremony was followed by an eight-course Chinese sit-down lunch at the Marriott. It was a lovely affair.
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| Listening to the sermon |
There was a father there with his son who was also jumping up and down on the couch and when he saw Ryan, yes, he told his son to watch out, don't bump into "mei mei" (little girl). Sigh. Even in such a boyish outfit?? Come on!
When lunch was finally served, Ryan tasted the first few courses but soon had enough and grew restless again. I let him play along the walkway to the stage where there were rose petals strewn on the floor. He had tons of fun gathering them and tossing them in the air!
I must say that I am horrified by children who run amok at Chinese dinners as they inconvenience others and make a nuisance of themselves, but Ryan was not in anyone's way and he was not making any sort of commotion, he was just playing quietly away from the tables, so I figured it was all right. Plus, I figured that this was as close as we would get to playing in a freshly-raked pile of dry leaves. It is by no means an adequate substitute, but it is certainly better than nothing.
There was a little girl, probably in primary school, who came up to Ryan a few times to tell him not to play with the rose petals because "people will scold". She kept trying to tidy up the "mess". She even came up to me to ask me to tell Ryan to stop it. It made me feel a little sad to think that this little girl had lost a little bit of that childhood magic. And yes, she referred to Ryan as a girl too.
The ceremony was in Mandarin with a translation into English (both the worship service and the sermon), so it took a little longer than usual. We had to get to Playclub at 2 pm so we stayed only for about half of the lunch.
Ryan had a blast at PlayClub this week. This is Ryan's third term and he's become quite the "senior" now, as many of the older children have graduated. This week he was the one to take down the letter of the week from the wall, something he's never bothered to do before. In previous terms, the older children always rushed to the wall first, and Ryan just let them. I think he figured, so long as someone gets the letter, it's ok. This term, most of the children are new and nobody is rushing to the wall at all, so Ryan must be thinking, oh all right, I'll do it. He still doesn't bother to rush to the wall though. He just stands in front, a short distance away and just points at the letter until Safina carries him to the wall to take it down. Haha!
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| Putting the toys away |
According to his teacher Safina, Ryan can "graduate" from PlayClub when he is 2.5 years old (although the programme does allow for children to stay on until they are 3.5 years old). A full PlayClub cycle is four terms - at the end of four terms, the children would have been introduced to the whole alphabet (and the letter sounds), basic numbers, all the common shapes and colours plus some key Chinese words (it's just an introduction, I don't think that the topics can be ingrained by spending just a few minutes once a week on each topic). In any event, we are not concerned about learning the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colours at PlayClub because Ryan already knows all that from learning at home. Our interest in PlayClub is in the other aspects - learning to work together, learning to follow someone's lead, self-expression, etc. and I'm pleased to note that Ryan is getting on very well in these areas.
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| Marching along to the "Clean Up" song! |
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