Day 2 - The early education of children

Erm...look what I found in the drugstore last night! I think it was on sale! (Also, my flatmate took me out for a nice sushi dinner in Tsim Sha Tsui. XD)

 

See pictures of food (mostly for Nikita) and stories of babies! (After the jump) 

Some more words about my flatmate:  Joy is a 25-year-old nursery school teacher and English tutor, and she offered me a possible part-time job at her school. It would only be a few hours each weekend, so I said I was interested. I can't help it - I love Asian children. :)

Anyway, I've always been one of those people who prefer to cook instead of eat out (I like to know what's in my food, thank you very much), but my flatmate doesn't cook (of course, this means that I get the kitchen all to myself!). So, since I was tagging along to her nursery school classes this morning, I joined her for breakfast. We ended up at a Chinese fast food joint, where you could have a "complete breakfast" for about 20 HKD, or $3 US.

 

The food was decent (okay, above average for that price) - that fried thing you see is fried fish, which isn't something I normally eat in the morning (or ever), but everybody else was eating it! I wasn't a fan of the lemon water though. I thought it would just be water with lemon, and when it came out, there was sugar at the bottom, so I figured, ah, it must be nuoc da chanh, but something was a bit "off" about the sugar. -_-

So! The school is called Wonderland Education Centre, and it is absolutely adorable. Everything is colorful, and there are squishy mats on the floor, and little drums and bells and flashcards everywhere. Now, I don't have any pictures, because I felt like it would be a little weird if I whipped out my camera in front of overbearing parents. Right. However, my phone has a camera, so maybe if I'm just a little sneaky...lol.

Joy's first lesson was with Isaac, who just turned 1. Seems a little young for structured education, but he's an incredibly bright (and cute) boy. He can't speak yet (I mean, he is just 12 months), but he understands nearly everything we say to him. Also, there's this interesting flashcard method from Japan, which involves cycling through a series of 10-15 cards at an abnormally fast rate, while singing a song about them. Then, you hold up two of them and ask the kid to point to the word that you're saying. It looks like they're reading, but what they're actually doing is recognizing words as "pictures." That is to say, they don't understand the words because they're made up of letters and sounds, but because the word, as a whole, forms an image.

By the time Isaac's lesson was over, I was thinking, okay, this isn't so bad - I can handle this. What I hadn't realized, though, was that Isaac was one of the good kids. The next lesson was a group one, with four children from the ages of 2.5 years to maybe 3.5? Two were boys and two were girls, and you know what? The girls were loud. The youngest/the tallest had somehow developed a penchant for running around and arbitrarily screaming, even when she was happy. She also wasn't much of a "team player" when it came to games. The oldest/the shortest was a sweet-faced girl with a sunny smile and a complete understanding of everything that was going on, all the time. And they were all so talkative! I'm always surprised by how much vocabulary children know. :)

The boys, however, were fairly subdued. One of them liked to lay down off in the corner, or cling to his mother's ankle. The other, Daniel (2.5 years old), soon became my favorite. At first, he was happy and quiet, but when all the extremely boisterous children showed up, he panicked, burst into tears, and insisted on going with his mommy to the other room (every child is required to have a caregiver with them - liability issues). Now, normally, since there's only one teacher, the child is just left alone with their parent until they want to come back in. Since I was just an "assistant" teacher, I decided to go off with him and his mother (who is extremely nice and helpful, unlike the stereotypical Asian parents in the other room, who have already asked Joy which university their toddlers should go to). So we colored, and sang the alphabet song a couple times, and flew one of those foam planes, and I even tried to teach him solfege. :) By the end of the day, he wasn't crying anymore, and I think I even coaxed a few smiles out of him. Nonetheless, he didn't want to go back to all the other kids (okay, Joy and I don't really blame him), so he and I just hung out. Good times. It doesn't hurt that he's absolutely adorable, and has Thomas the Tank Engine shorts.

After the classes, Joy took me to a Thai restaurant - of course I ordered pad Thai, just to see what it would be. Well, folks, it's pretty much the same everywhere, I guess, although it was rather greasy at this place, and the tofu was a little too salty. Also, why is the tea always sweetened? Immediately after the meal, I was wondering if I was going to gain an absurd amount of weight here, since it actually is cheaper to eat out than to cook, and the food is okay. A few hours later, though, when I was curled up in a ball on the couch, feeling like my intestines were moving all over the place, I remembered the fact that I lost about 10 pounds when I stayed in Shanghai. Hopefully, I can get acclimated quickly - I'd like to be able to explore all the restaurants here, since there's half a dozen on every street. In the meantime, though, I think I'll stick to my supermarket staples: apples, peanut butter, yogurt, and some delicious broccoli!

Speaking of supermarkets, look at this strange notice! I don't know what this new legislation is, but I plan on looking it up later. A bunch of imported stuff did, in fact, have some words blacked out.


Random fun facts:
- Although I turn the water heater on, I still haven't been able to get hot water for my showers. I don't exactly want to get used to cold showers, but I may have to put up with it.
- It's funny - I've gotten used to being able to find two food items in whatever country I'm in: Pringles and Fanta. Have definitely spotted the Pringles everywhere (aisles and aisles of them, sometimes!), but I haven't found Fanta yet. Isn't that strange?
- The parents at the nursery school call me "Miss Polly." Lulz.
- Took an extended nap this afternoon (how I'm ever going to get used to the time difference is beyond me), only to be woken up by girlish shrieking - my flatmate found a cockroach in her underwear drawer. Butttt....I was not bovvered - there was a scorpion in my bedroom last week.

Until next time -
P.