The Real China

After many months of civilized life in Shanghai, it is time for me to see something more Chinese... more real... and even more interesting...

Next week I will go to Guangxi province, south China to visit children in rural mountain areas together with a Maitian organization. They are helping really poor children to go to school and who knows... hopefully for some to change their lives... They go to most remote villages and look for kids that are not able to get any education. There are three main reasons for why they do not go to school:
1. The closest school is 2-3 hours hiking away from their homes.
2. Their parents need them at home to work in the fields or simply doing daily chores.
3. They do not have money.
And do you know how much one year at school cost there? Less that 25 EUR per kid...
And do you know how much it cost to build one school there? Less than 6.000 EUR...

Me and a friend will accompany big group of Chinese volunteers. We will visit two schools that earlier  received school materials, toys, clothes etc We will also visit number of families to either check if the kids are going to school (got money and actually are willing to hike hours to get to school) or to convince parents that education is important and they should let their kids go and learn...

It will be a rough time. Rough accommodation, cold and a lot of hiking. The last part I so do not mind :)
I get butterflies in my stomach just from thinking about what's ahead of me...

When does IKEA become less Swedish?

Living so far away from Europe, you start treating places like IKEA like piece of a home land. The same way as embassy legally is treated as its country, entering IKEA you feel like you travel between places. Usually when I go to IKEA, directly from the entrance I feel like I am in Sweden (kind of).

But last time it was very different. When I came the first thing I saw was a lot of products related to Chinese New Year, read kitchen towels with yellow dragons, hot pot pads and many other things. And the music... Very Chinese... The charming part was people singing and swinging to the rhythm. Both adults and kinds where singing "Happy New Year" when looking at the couches or kitchen furnitures.

It is only one week left to the celebration of the Chinese New Year and we are still struggling with ourselves if we should stay here and try to see how Chinese people celebrate or should we get away from here... Why do we consider leaving China during this time? One reason never ending fireworks... 24h around the clock.

According to the very old tradition New Year has been perceived as a man-eating beast that was afraid of red colour and loud sound. When people realized that they started placing red paper decorations in their windows and put bamboo wod to the fire (old time fireworks). So, the louder it gets the safest it will be in the coming year... And believe me, Chinese simply love fireworks. They do them for any occasion they have; birthday, opening a new shop, buying a new car and so on... And with these "small" occasions they go wild. So with a new year... God help us all... :) They call New Year celebration "Spring Festival". According to lunar calendar the spring starts then.

And strangely enough you can feel in the air spring coming and the birds are sing in the garden from early morning :)

Hello World!

Long time, no read... And there was so much to write about... Truly eventful time. Vincent turn 5 and had a great birthday party with all his classmates and some siblings. That was what I call FULL HOUSE. He was very happy and all the kids as well. Pure success :) Especially that grandma was with us then. Kisses grandma!

Vincent played his first Bingo (so did I). His patience lasted for two games and then he played with his friends. He won a little something in lucky draw. He was so happy :)

Lucia tåg - a Swedish tradition that he got to go with during Winter Concert. Of course dressed as a ginger bread man. Same concert and a great performance by Vincent's class singing 'catch a falling star'. Just lovely.

One day later yet another performance on the school stage. It is amazing that Vincent who was so shy if front of others, now he simply goes on a stage and perform as it was the most natural thing. And the most important thing, he enjoys it so much.

Vincent is training at the swimming pool and the bath tap to break his fear of being under water. He accomplished a lot last year, from being in panic when in the water, to fully enjoying playing and swimming with help of foam pipe. I hope he will start swimming by himself soon. Next lesson already next week :)

Yesterday we came back from Poland. Long trip, but sooo worth it. We enjoyed every minute of our stay there. It felt like we never left :)

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you all best in 2012!

Weird concert

On Saturday I went out with two Polish girls. We went to the concert of so-called jazz band from France. Concert was at the very nice place, Shanghai Oriental Art Center. The building is called also the Blooming Orchidea. Both exterior and interior are very modern and interesting.

We all were looking very much forward to listening to some jazz. But it all went wrong from the beginning.... Concert started with an Italian song, kind of from 40, 50 ties. Nothing wrong with the song as such, but it got me completely confused since I expected jazz, if not in English then at least in French.

Volume level of the band and front man was bad balanced making it almost impossible to here him. From the first song I did everything to ignore/avoid the front man who was so extremely annoying that I couldn't stand him. His way of acting on stage was weird and tiring. He danced in the way that you usually see your uncles at the wedding shortly before it is time to go home.

The energy of the front man and the rest of the band was like black and white (cloths they were actually wearing). Eight guys practically not moving and the front man being all over the stage. The band was playing very good, but you couldn't feel the passion and the front man... yes, passion of an uncle from the wedding....

They had a translator, a very attractive Chinese girl who spoke both English and French. Front man spoke mainly French which was translated by the girl to Chinese. That left us without any knowledge of what they were talking about :)

The best moment of the concert was when about 40 young Chinese came on the stage and started singing...

The whole concert was filled with Italian, Spanish and French songs, one or two English... No jazz at all (if you do not count few nice solos on piano or drums).

We did not get what we came for, but we definitely got to laugh quite much.

Chinese people have a special way of experiencing music, deep deep inside their souls, nothing is showed on the outside...

crrriss, crrross

Last Friday Vincent came from school and started talking German-like... I thought that maybe it was because he was playing a lot with his German friend... But it turned out that he simply started saying 'R' properly :) He makes up words with strong 'R' and says them out laud. He has a lot of fun doing that :)

He continued the whole weekend and when he woke up this morning crrriss... crrross were still on the top of the hit list :)

Polish and proud!

"He speaks Portuguese with his Brazilian father, Polish with his mother, he was born in Sweden and speaks Swedish, he speaks quite fluent English and now he's learning Mandarin. During my 14 years of work overseas I have never had a student like this. I would like to welcome on stage Vincent De Paula."

Vincent with his teacher and Amy

Before the parade

This is how Vincent's teacher introduced him before he gave him a Global and Community Appreciation award, during the assembly of UN International Day of Peace at school.

All children in their national clothes

OK, I know he speaks all these languages, I am used to it and at the same time amazed every time I think about it. But to hear Vincent's teacher saying that in front of all students, teachers and parents made me the proudest mother in the world. I stood there, with a smile around my face (literally), taking 100 photos per second and felt how proudness and happiness are filling every cell of my body. My boy, with his shy personality, started international school and found himself there in an amazingly great way.

"Dzien dobry"

But lets start from the beginning....

Today was a big day for kids at school, and for Vincent it was extra special. As a part of the celebration of the Day of Peace, he was carrying the Polish flag in the parade (as he is the only child in the school having anything to do with Poland), he went on the stage and said 'Good day' in Polish (all kids with the flags did that in their languages). Later he has performed with his classmates singing 'Hello world' and playing paper board guitar (they made them themselves in the school). And after that he received his award. His friend Amy also got one. She is born in Singapore and has Dutch parents. She speaks Dutch and English and is the true citizen of the world :)

Vincent was so relaxed and enjoyed himself so much that for a long time I couldn't get my eyes dry...

Racuchy z jablkami :)

After the assembly we had a food fair with food from all the countries represented in the school. All food was prepared or arranged by parents. You should have seen all the kids (and adults)  with their mouth full of all possible food :)

I shared a table with Slovakia and made 'racuchy z jablakami' :)

It was a great day! Now Vincent is sleeping peacefully :)

Vincent speaks Chinese

We are still fully enjoying Vincent's progress in speaking English and yesterday he has surprised me big. He started counting in Chinese, as it was the easiest thing in the world :)

yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba :)