I finally got some breathing space at work! Of course things are never as quiet as one imagines they will be, and I got roped into co-leading a workshop for language teachers on pedagogy (which I know exactly nothing about) and assessment standards. With the latter I feel on much safer ground, especially as only 2 weeks ago I did a 2-day workshop on Hindi proficiency testing. The other Hindi teachers and I spent 2 days mock-testing students for their level so we could learn about government-sanctioned assessment standards. There is and has been so much federal money for language teaching in the US, I don't think there is anything like the programs they have here in the UK. That same week I went to a conference about "teaching and learning" - it was again all about assessment. I guess with all the federal funding comes a desperate need to quantify absolutely everything, and so I went to workshops on assessing the impact of study abroad (virtually impossible unless you have a control group of people who live in a garage without any exposure to the larger world) and also of extra-curricular student groups. Again, students who get organising expeditions and clubs together are probably in most cases a self-selected group from a certain background and so the actual impact of these activities is hard to measure. Yet to retain funding it needs to be done.
A nice little overlap between work and play was when I went to Lucas' preschool to talk about India with the children. I had brought some books which they had looked at before I came, and on the day itself I brought along dress-up clothes, bindis ("forehead dots"), and a selection of foods for the children to hold and smell. It was a short presentation as at the end of the day the kids' attention span is limited, but it was fun and maybe they will retain something from it. Lucas and I now often read a book about the monsoon and how a little boy goes splashing in the puddles and sees a peacock while he is out.
Back to the dentist for us too - 6-monthly cleaning for both mother and child. Lucas went first and was a total trooper, then he got to "play" while it was my turn in the chair. While the hygienist was doing very painful stuff to my gums Lucas staged dinosaur wars using two sets of plastic teeth. It was hard not to laugh but that of course made the chance of being stabbed in the gums with a metal object even greater.
We had time for play as well of course. One night we went to a bonfire party nearby. There is an area that extends into the lake like a tongue, it is beautiful for running and walking, and there are firepits there for general use. All you have to do is sign up on a website and not only is the firepit reserved for you, they drop off free firewood as well! So a friend had her daughter's birthday party there, Lucas and a bunch of other kids ran around the woods and had hot dogs and smores (some local "delicacy" where by you toast a marshmallow and then squash it between a sweet cracker and a piece of chocolate). Lucas is very much into the outdoors life, and likes nothing better than going potty under the open sky. Inevitably the request came "mummy, poo poo" so off we went to a discreet spot, and then I showed him how to cover his offering to nature with leaves etc. I felt we had gotten away with it but as soon as we were done Lucas charged back to the party and announced "I did a poo poo in the grass". His speech is really coming along now (speech therapy hasn't even started yet) and he often has sentences that everyone can understand.
Last weekend my friend Kay and I and our children went back to the waterpark where I had been with Lucas last month. It was Kay's birthday and she wanted to have an outing and had been impressed with my waterpark stories. On the way up there we stopped at a family restaurant to have a traditional Wisconsin lunch - I had the traditional sandwich and Lucas played a video game which was considering the quality of the food a good choice! Often these places have really great food but this one not so much. It was a great experience though, and those places always make me feel like I'm in the movies. The waterpark was excellent fun, and the following day we drove to a place called Appleton where they have a top-class children's museum. It was all totally interactive, more like an educational play haven than a museum and we had a really great afternoon. The weather has been great so there was nobody else there as everyone was outside. A few weeks earlier I had taken Lucas to the Arboretum where he ran around the trees - a really beautiful spot.
Lela goes to a Chinese preschool where she learns Mandarin and the violin, and Kay invited us to come along for an open evening. It was totally bizarre, lots of super well-behaved little children who can play Mozart and Bach. Lucas did a good job of sitting still for about 20 minutes, and then discovered some cars somewhere and was off. But it was a fun evening, and the potluck food was amazing of course!
It has not all been fun fun fun. Things at Lucas' preschool had been deteriorating for a while as the young teacher really had a hard time looking after 7-8 kids every day with very little support. I had written to the Director before telling her I was concerned but she waved my concerns away. The teacher was getting increasingly grumpy, unfriendly and uncommunicative, and then I found out about an unreported injury which she denied had ever happened even though a fellow-parent watched Lucas fall. When I tried to contact the owner (who is also a fellow-parent) I was told not to speak to her (in a kind of "how dare you bother me" kind of way) but to talk to the teacher instead. So I decided I had had enough and pulled Lucas out. It was probably the most stressful week of my single-parent life, the teacher was nasty to me just before I left and said some unkind words about Lucas as well which was no doubt her covering her back for lying to me about his fall, but still really stung. This week Lucas has been with friends and friends' nannies, and he also had 2 mornings at his new preschool where he will start full-time next week. It is the same place he would have gone to in September anyway, and I am unbelievably lucky that they had a spot for him so soon. The settling in seems to have gone well but I am very anxious as obviously it has been really unsettling for Lucas - he never even got to say goodbye to anyone because when the teacher and I had our last very unpleasant conversation all the kids had already left, and I never went back. We have seen some children socially but that is not the same. Now without any preparation he has to get used to a new space, new rules, new teachers - he will be fine of course, I know that, but boy. It's been tough. It feels like he's grown up a lot in the space of a week, he all of a sudden developed a clothes aesthetic so now has a say in what he wears - I like that but it's a new thing. The new school doesn't allow crocs so we went to buy new tennis shoes and he chose....pink ones. Worrying the other boys in his new school would tease him I desperately tried to divert him to something more traditionally boyish - I even offered him spiderman shoes! - but no. He wanted pink shoes. I am so proud of him for sticking to his (pink) guns on that one, I couldn't believe it when he turned down spiderman. When we went on our first visit together this week the teacher asked him for his name, and although he has answered that question a thousand times saying "Boody" (my petname for him) , for the first time ever he said "Wucas". It's like he is really learning that there is a mum-shaped world and another world. I am so proud of him.
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