Old dog, new tricks

We have a new family activity - a weekly Mandarin class! Finally found a lovely laoshi to teach us conversational Mandarin, one who was willing to take all four of us in - aged 41, 39, 9, and 8 respectively! And it was no easy task to find someone willing to put herself/himself through that challenge. C especially is quite a handful being multiply sensitive to competition, easily distracted, grumpy and inclined to test authority. K is on the nerdy side, conscientious but stressed out when the class is too fast for her liking. The presence of the kids reins in T and my tendencies to compete with each other in classroom situations. The kids have better pronunciation than the adults and sometimes, better memories...but we're all kept on our proverbial toes.In short, we're a handful...hahahah. But it's a nice, positive project and one that will hopefully have us progressing nicely toward our chosen third language. The other amusing thing? We both got Chinese names. I am Ming Ling and T is Na Tan. On that note, wa an wo de pengyou!

Dearest Lola

I know it's early, but I've been thinking about you and wondering how you are. Are you baking up a storm. My mouth waters for puto and sans rival and chocolate cake. Are you tending to your garden? Are you and Lolo going for those early morning (4am walks) you used to try to get me to go on? If you visited me here, we would take you to the orchid gardens, and we would get up early and walk to the track, and we would go to the river and the reservoir and Chinatown. Or maybe we would buy plants so the planters at home can finally be filled properly and with the right stuff.

So many things going on, but it's not strange, is it, that I think of you frequently and wonder what you would think about all of it, and of K and C and T and the way things are here in Singapore. And what you might be able to arrange for L and M in terms of, well, you know what you want, right? I've always believed in your power and know that's truer now than it ever was.

Need I say I miss you so much? Give Lolo a kiss for me and tell him I miss him too - could have used his Lolo's medicine ointment on K's and C's bites, bumps and bruises. Advanced Happy Birthday dearest Lola...