Ayi Ayi Ayi!!!!!!

I finally gave in and hired an a yi. The word literally means aunt (specifically on your mother's side) but has been adapted to mean any woman of your mother's age plus nannies and house keepers, in my case, house keeper :) It is so clean clean clean! I was giddy as a school girl when I got home. It smells so nice, and she rearranged the furniture! That cracked me up! I felt so bad and guilty for how messy I had let my apartment get, that I actually spent all last night and this morning cleaning for her. I guess I'm not the only one. When I mentioned this to Ariana, she said every Monday/Wednesday/Friday is a mad dash to put away all her clothes. Any clothes left out will be washed, whether or not they are dirty.

Best observation made by an international teacher: "You folks from Western Washington never use umbrellas." That's right. We're proud to represent! All 4 of us :)

This picture showed up on our school webpage. We had a Chinese New Year presentation celebrating different dances from the different provinces in China. (Also some of our teachers learned the dragon dance like the video from the Lantern Festival). This is supposed to be a dance that the high schoolers performed, and then they asked some teachers to come try. Bid and I were the first to be asked. There are students controlling the sticks and they move to a certain rhythm, so if you're successful you can step through the sticks on the beat.

At school:
One of my Nursery kids is getting promoted to Pre K next week, rightfully so, since he's 2 months from turning 5 years old. This week he's spent the mornings with me, and the afternoons in Wendi's class. I realized today that maybe I pampered him a little too much when he came back from P.E. and tried to take off his jacket without my help.
The scene: I'm sitting at my computer and I hear the kinders walking through the hall. I have two doors to my classroom that have two tall windows so I can watch the kids go by.
The story: As my elf comes in, I watch as he unzips his jacket, and then tries to take it off. He can't get the sleeves to come off though. It was like a cartoon. I see him hopping one way and then out of sight. Then he comes wiggling back the other way, shaking his arms like a frantic bird. And then again he's out of sight. I felt bad, I was giggling so much. Before I could get up, he managed to jump enough to shake off his coat.
The lesson: I think maybe it's time I teach him strategies for taking off his jacket by himself, that don't include hopping like a bunny.

A new favorite word!
Don't get too excited, "angry" is still definitely the most popular word in our classroom (sung and chanted very happily of course). But when we discussed the letter and sound for "F", for February and Friday, one of the pictures was a flamingo. I told them flamingos are always pink. Now one of my elves unzips his jacket and uses it for wings and says, "I'm flamingo!" ... EVERY DAY! Then one day, another elf came dressed in a pink sweater. The other elf said, "Look, he's flamingo!" So excited about the word flamingo. 
I guess it's not that unusual to have favorite words in a new language. We always had our own favorite words when learning Spanish, and we'd try to creatively work them into any sentence. Thus my favorite words in new languages have been:
Spanish: trabajabamos = "we worked"
Chinese: ping guo = "apple" and niu nai = "milk". (I like these ones I think mainly because of the tones, they're fun to say.)

Today at indoor recess, one of Wendi's elves confided in me his very complicated predicament. It's a loud room, so I didn't catch the whole story, but somehow lasers are involved, and there were certain students who were already his friend, and 2 students who were not his friend yet. So he pondered with me, how to get these 2 students to be his friend. He leaned up against my chair, propping his elbow on it, and set his chin on his hand, crossing his leg and assumed a thinking stance. Shaking his head he told me, "It's a tricky way." Five minutes later he came running up to me to say, "I think I know how to solve my problem!" Then he brushed my hair away from my ear and whispered very slowly and clearly, "I will just play with them!" He gave me one affirmative nod, and then happily ran off. Oh the wonderful problem solvers we are raising :)