Fortune Kindergarten

Just last month we had the pleasure of attending the kid's kindergarten Christmas concert. As I sat there in nervous anticipation of our own children's performance, I couldn't help but notice one of the reasons I am so glad we accepted the opportunity to live in Shanghai: an amazing expat community. And nowhere is there a better example than our kid's school, Fortune Kindergarten. Looking around the room I counted families from the following countries: China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Israel, France, Germany, USA, Canada, Senegal, Ireland, England, Czech Republic, Australia & India. I feel so lucky that we can give our kids a multicultural experience on a daily basis. They learn about other cultures from their classmates and teachers everyday. In fact, Grace was watching TV the other day and Dora the Explorer was on- in Filipino. After a few minutes, she asked me "Mom, what English are they speaking?" I told her Filipino, from the Philippines. "Oh, just like teacher Rose at school,
right?"

Another thing we love about Fortune Kindergarten is their approach to bilingual education. When searching for schools, I found that most international schools here teach only in English with a 30 minute Mandarin language lesson each day. I didn't feel like the kids would really learn the language with such little exposure. Fortune teaches one full day in English, and the next full day in Mandarin; however, both the English and the Chinese teacher are present in the classroom at all times. And when Grace finally spit out a full sentence in Mandarin today, I felt pretty good about our choice.

Of course, there are some drawbacks at the school but understand that these are issues in nearly all schools in China:

1) They like to keep the windows open even when it's 30degrees outside and there is no heat/ac in the hallways- just in the classrooms (and in the local schools, even the classrooms aren't heated). I think Grace froze her little butt off last year until I realized I needed to dress her in multiple layers!

2) No guidelines on peanuts, home backed snacks, or other big no-no's in the US. Again, doesn't bother me but I chuckled as I handed out snickers for their Halloween party thinking about how this would never fly in America.

3) Sometimes if I call the office in the mornings, nobody speaks English- Oh well, just gives me a chance to practice my chinese!

Anyway, overall it's a great little school and we plan on sending the kids there next year as well. Enjoy the pics from Fortune's Christmas Concert and Grace's 4th B.day celebration at school last week.

Audrey and her dance partner during the xmas concert.

Grace looking a little bored during the xmas concert.

Grace's Toy Story Cake (her latest obsession)

The Birthday girl blowing out her candle

The two pre-k classes looking at Grace and waiting patiently for a piece of cake (there are 15 kids per class).

The front of the kid's school

The Shanghai Zoo

This weekend we made our 3rd trip to the Shanghai Zoo. It's a pretty good zoo- lots of animals and nice open green spaces. But, as with most things in China, there are some drawbacks. First off, this zoo would never cut it in the "sue happy" USA. Of course the enclosures for the dangerous animals are adequate but a lot of the other enclosures feature low walls and wide gates (which my weaselly 4 year old can easily slip through). I just kept wondering how many stupid people have stuck their hand into one of these enclosures and gotten bitten. Honestly, if you really wanted to walk right up to an elephant, you could. On the other hand, one cool thing about going to a zoo on the other side of the world is that you get to see some animals that most American zoos don't have- giant pandas, really cool vultures, asian tigers, sun bears, and red pandas. The funny thing is that some of our common animals in America are a novelty for the Chinese- as evidenced by the huge display of seagulls. Yep, the same old seagulls that crap all over the beach in New Jersey are one of the most popular displays in the Shanghai zoo.

The seagull enclosure.

There are some really weird things going on at this zoo as well. Namely, "Pet World". I must admit we skipped this exhibit on the first couple trips because we assumed it was a standard petting zoo. Not so. It's actually a display of dogs and cats. Yep, each breed has it's own cage- collies, beagles, poodles, huskies, afghans, etc. and a display sign attached explaining the breeds attributes. It's freaky.

The Collie display at the zoo. Weird.

Ok, the next bizarre thing we noticed is that they have an area where you can pay to have your picture taken with a stuffed zebra. Not the toy kind- a taxidermy stuffed zebra. Which is old and showing it's age. Yuck.

The "stuffed" zebra

But the thing that bothers us above all else at this zoo is the behavior of the Chinese visitors. It's always the same. There are signs all over the zoo "Don't feed the animals"; "Don't throw garbage into the enclosures". Common sense in the US, right? Not so in China! If I had a dollar for every time we have watched someone throw food into a cage, we'd be rich. Of course the primates are the favorite critters to feed but I've also seen people toss crackers to the foxes, bears, birds, pretty much no poor creature is exempt (except for the ones you can't get to like the pandas and lions). On top of that, we have watched people throw their garbage down into the enclosures as well. "Hmm, let's see how this sun bear will react if we throw our empty soda cup into his cage". Sev and I have made it our personal mission at the zoo to reprimand people when they do this but I'm pretty sure it's a lost cause. And it's hard to teach the kids to respect animals and the rules when every adult they see is behaving in the exact opposite way. Oh well, we will keep trying.

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year - my resolution is to keep up the blog a little better this year! By the way, for some reason, I can now access the blog so I can see comments- and comments are welcome! Also, I added a voting button at the end of each blog so you can let me know if you liked it or not.