14 February 2008

Matthew in his new school

Matthew started Pre-Nursery classes in his new school this new school term. We also decided to put him in the school bus for the trip to my mom's place. This was partly because we did not want him to be pampered and expect to be "ferried" everywhere. Since he likes to take public bus, we thought it would be a good idea to start him on the school bus as well.

The initial 2 weeks were quite bad. He practically stuck to us and cried every morning we dropped him off at school. He got used to his new teachers and friends. Gradually he stopped all the fuss. These few mornings, he even took his own bag and ran to class for the morning assembly, even forgetting to hug and kiss me goodbye one day.

The school bus was a more challenging task to deal with. He's the 2nd last kid to be dropped off and he did express concern over that - "a little scared," he told his teacher in Mandarin. I always pack some snacks in his bag, in case he is hungry. He actually finishes all the snacks which I have packed so far, the tuppers always come back empty. Perhaps having some food in the bus takes his mind off the long journey. Actually it's not really long, only 30min. Well, I'm happy that he's happy to take the school bus.

The teachers all have similar comments about him. He is very very eloquent in Mandarin and is picking up English very well and fast. He is very smart and very quick to respond.

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Matthew has been telling us stories of a friend in school the whole of last week. The friend is a girl and her name is "Xiao Ming". He will get us to tell him stories of "Xiao Ming" which we made up. We have no idea who this little girl is. This morning, we finally found out.

We were early this morning and the school bus just arrived in school. We decided to walk to the area where the kids alight and look for this girl called "Xiao Ming". Matthew found her. They held hands and walked to class together! I saw on her name tag that she's actually called "Charmaine". I asked the teacher assistant whether there was a girl called "Xiao Ming", she said no. We concluded that Matthew must have heard "Xiao Ming" instead of "Charmaine", because his mind is more tuned to Mandarin pronunciation. It was so cute to watch the both of them hold hands and walking together.

Our son has a girlfriend and her name is Charmaine. Wow! kids really do start young these days!

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