Mr. Mai's Coffeehouse

One of our new hangout locations is Mr. Mai’s (My’s) Coffeehouse.  It’s owned by a wonderful, Father-following couple from Louisiana.  It’s a comfortable environment, with great drinks and cookies for our girls.  The past two weeks we’ve gone there on Tuesday evening.  The coffeehouse is a place where Chinese people can come to meet foreigners, practice English and talk about important things.  Tuesday is music night, and several of our teachers – Kirk, Taylor, and Ryan – play and sing, so it’s been fun to hear them.  Last week they even did Baby by Justin Bieber and our teacher Mandi did the rap of the song.  It was funny!

We enjoyed getting to know some of our new friends even better several evenings ago when Logan, Amber, little Lyla, Joel and Rachel all came to our house for dinner.  I made tortillas from scratch and we fried up some ground pork and seasoned it, then Rachel and Amber made salsa.  The food was SO good!  You may remember that these are all young couples that we’ve met through Mr. Mai’s coffeehouse.  The best part of the evening though was when Joel and Rachel told us they’re expecting a baby!!!  We were all shocked, but so are they!  They didn’t realize when they moved to China that Rachel was already pregnant.  Now instead of staying until next July, they will return to Michigan in November because the baby will be born in May.  All of us, along with some other couples, also plan to have Fellowship time together on Sunday mornings.  We’ll try to make it to that as often as we can.

The other day when I picked Sophia up from preschool she was crying and she was wearing borrowed clothes from her teacher.  I knew there must have been a big problem, because I had sent a change of clothes for her, so to see her in different clothes meant she had to change several times.  Her teacher doesn’t speak English so she couldn’t tell me what happened, but Sophia told me that she threw up twice!  I couldn’t believe that this happened and the school hadn’t called me to come get her!  So Adam went the next morning to talk to the teacher and see what happened.  The teacher said that a little boy had spilled water on Sophia and scribbled on her paper, but she never mentioned the throwing up.  So then I asked Sophia about the water and the scribbling, and she vaguely remembered, but she just kept talking about throwing up.  Finally, we were able to realize that the teacher thought Sophia was upset about the water and scribbling, but we knew she was really upset about throwing up.  However, to the teacher, the throwing up was no big deal.  They just cleaned her up and carried on.  You see, in China, people throw up all the time (maybe because their cleanliness standards with food and cooking are different than in the US??) and so to them, it’s really no big deal when a child throws up.  But to us, as Americans, it’s a big deal, and if a child does it at school, you send them to the nurse or to go home.  So we told them to please, if it happens again, call us and we want to get Sophia.  We said it’s just our American culture, so they seemed to understand.

The preschool is really wonderful.  It’s very clean and has great toys for the kids.  Sophia’s class has 24 kids and 4 teachers.  One teacher is the main teacher; another is the life teacher.  She is like the mother, helping the kids use the bathroom, wash their hands, eat their food, etc.  The third teacher is the English teacher and the last is the arts and crafts teacher.  Usually it’s the main teacher who brings Sophia to me at the main door when I pick Sophia up at noon, and she doesn’t speak English, so I can’t get a report on the day.

Every Friday Sophia brings home a homework book and she does two pages.  Every-other-week she brings home a kind of journal book where the teachers write progress reports to us, then we write back to them.  Also, the school has a website.  When we login we receive many e-mails from the teachers and we can watch a live video feed from her classroom!  Isn’t that amazing?  Talk about teacher accountability.  The teachers also send out many text messages every day telling about what the students are doing, what’s on the menu, etc.  Adam and I have been amazed at how much communication goes on at this school, but then again, I guess it’s understandable when people only have one child and everything in life (or so they think) rides on this one child.  The school also has uniforms, and they take it very seriously that the students must wear the uniforms on certain days. I know this because I received two different e-mails from the principal, and she was quite stern about the fact that the students must wear them.  They haven’t given Sophia her uniform yet, so I need to ask about that today when I pick her up.  The way I read the e-mails is that I copy the text and paste it into the Google translator.

I plan to teach an English lesson at the preschool this week as my way of interviewing for the job of Foreign English Teacher, so you can think of me that I would do well and get the job!