So I was telling my friend Al when Caitlin & I were in Adelaide recently, that I had wanted my kids to grow up in Malaysia, like Hot Mummee & I did; and specifically, for them to get at least Chinese medium primary education, like I had.
Growing up here alone would already expose them to the various Chinese dialects; and especially in Kuala Lumpur where Cantonese is widely spoken and used for everyday transactions.
Already, spending her days at Grandma’s after school, hearing them speak Cantonese, and being exposed to the Chinese soapies they watch just before dinner, are already slowly but surely equipping her with the language. Hot Mummee and I cannot use this as our secret language anymore- yes we’ve benn caught out a few times already! Hokkien or Fujian is my dialect, but I’d rather she knows how to speak Mandarin well first.
I am not too worried about Caitlin not getting enough chances to learn English. Both Hot Mummee and I speaks very good our English, and also given the podcasts and TV that she watches I seriously doubt she’d be missing out on being able to learn this language good.
This week Caitlin went back to pre-school. We had earlier enrolled her in the Chinese medium for her age, called Pre-2; she’s just finished Pre-1. Then, few days before Christmas the school calls up and says that due to insufficient numbers, that syllabus is cancelled.
Oh, believe me- Hot Mummee can kick up a fuss when she wants to. And I let her do most of the talking! Being the date it was, they didn’t leave us much time to look for alternative schools, and we wanted Caitlin to start being exposed to Mandarin this year, since it will be 2011 when she start proper primary school lessons in Mandarin in full force. Leaving only 2010 for this exposure frankly will not be enough to prepare her.
The long and short of it (mostly long!), we have come to an agreement with the school on this: We enrolled her into Pre-3 level Mandarin syllabus- meaning she is actually in the group a year older, and where she will probably repeat Pre-3 again in 2010. We haven’t highlighted this fact to Caitlin, only that she will be in a new class (“yay!”) with new friends (“yay!”), just not the older part.
So on Monday I dropped her off at school. She’s “graduated” to attending a classroom upstairs, where her ex-peers are still downstairs. I walked her to the classroom door and the new teacher took her in. I went downstairs to check some things with the principal, and went back upstairs to see how she was doing; seeing as the class would now ALL speak Mandarin instead of her most comfortable English, and that they were older, and likely already knew each other from being together from last year.
I peeped.
She was standing backed against the wall, between first and second row of chairs / tables, body weight on one hand on a chair, watching someone / something incessantly / interestingly out of my sight. She had that very apprehensive look on her face that she gets when she is very unsure of what is going on / if she is in very unfamiliar territory.
She turned to look at the doorway where we parted earlier; probably cos in her peripheral vision she saw a figure (me).
Her face relaxed, broke into a very wide grin, and waved the kind of kid-wave that shakes the body.
She is okay.
I waved back. It’s okay. So I left. All warm and fuzzy.
