Saturday Afternoon in Yuanshan

When I let go of helping the kids obtain perfect Chinese by enrolling them in school in Taiwan, I increased my desire to find someone who could live in our home and continue to teach them. After all, I am nothing if not a firm believer in OUTSOURCING what seems difficult. And continually engaging the kids on this subject has been tricky, to put it mildly.

So we have announced to friends, acquaintances, social networks, etc. the specifics of hoping to find a Chinese live-in tutor for our family. Due to the live-in nature of the arrangement, we're only looking for girls. We hope to find someone who really likes and can engage with KIDS. It seems that is the most important characteristic, and after that, assuming they are a native Chinese speaker, everything else should fall into place.... Right?

So we've begun the "interview" process, which just looks like meeting with people who have expressed interest to gage their true connectivity with the kids. Our first candidate, Abby, was a hit. She came here Nov 1 and came to our ward Family Home Evening last week. She is investigating dates and tickets now.

We've had flaky issues with a few people and this past weekend were finally able to meet our next candidate, Vivian. That entailed a trip with Kai to the neighborhood of his Saturday ballet class. Q came along and we made quite a day of it. Near the MRT station in Yuanshan, there is an exhibition center and on weekends, a "farmer's market" (likely distinguishable from traditional markets in some way which I'm not aware). I hoped these would provide an engaging back-drop to relax and get to know someone.

Meanwhile, much of MY actual relaxing time was spent pulling away to get Kai to class, then on walking back from that drop off to spend 45 minutes with the fam, to pull away again to walk back to get Kai. Phew. (Hence, perhaps, the lack of meaningful photo documentation.)

But a good time WAS had by those who did less walking/dancing. The market was fun. Vivian took us to a lego cafe where the kids could play while the adults sat, ate, and looked at their phones. At least, that was what the other adults there did. The food didn't look like our scene - cake and pizza - and our other adult, Vivian, WAS into legos and did interact a bit with the kids but not so much with Q or myself. She didn't seem especially engaging either when we sat to watch Arthur and Eloise on the bouncy house, or when all the kids climbed on and through the banyan tree.

She came with EV and me to get Kai from class, and I tried to draw her out on that walk, but it mostly wound up being me carrying on about myself so that it wouldn't feel awkward. So I don't know that Vivian is the one. I think we may try to have her to our home to see if it's just a crowded atmosphere that kicks her inner-introvert into high gear.

But while our purpose in having the whole family go may have been a bust, the kids got to see a fantastic street performer who was part dancer (robotic movements to progressively push his torso low and parallel to the ground, like going under a limbo stick and then slowly raising again), part magician (like making a whole wine bottle disappear), and part stupid human tricks (sword swallowing and even balloon swallowing, which they reported he never removed so perhaps it popped. YIKES!). I missed it all, but judging from the enthusiasm with which the whole family recreated for me parts of his act, it was something to see!

The kids with the street performer who deserved to be much more, I'm told.

Meanwhile, I was trying to keep Arthur safe on his choice of entertainment: a bouncy slide and house. Only I didn't head the prompting to not let him go into the bouncy house. I didn't want to create a scene fighting him about it, after all. So I didn't interfere when he sauntered over to the bouncy house, and only minutes later, was kicking myself as he emerged screaming and limping. He was crying hard, as if he had busted something. The pressure on him and me as I tried to care for his needs - a thousand eyes on the foreigners - was too much so I summoned Eloise to grab their shoes and I carried him to a removed bench where I hoped to get him to calm down so I could assess things.

I started by wiping off his sweat and grime from playing. After I cleaned his face, then hands, then feet, fed him a "treat" from my bag, and had him take a big drink of water, he was just intermittently whimpering so I told him I was going to play piggy with his toes. He told me one was hurting. This distracted him further and I was able to confirm that all the piggies got to the market and could come home again. So we put on his shoes and headed back to the tree for more gentle play, but he didn't want to walk. And once I put him down there, he was still favoring it.

I snapped this picture, merely fascinated by the make-shift nature of this stroller. Little did I know that in a few hours, my little boy would be needing such a contraption!

Finally, after giving Kai some time after his class wrapped up to have fun, I called time and we said good-bye to Vivian, taking home from our day's adventure a few black sesame crackers and a limping little boy.

(Follow-up on Arthur: I gave him children's ibuprofen for the next two days, Sunday and Monday. By Monday night he was still favoring it, and I told Q we would need to take him in for an x-ray. Then.... well, that's for the next entry!)