Back to school (for me)

Four weeks into my "break", and I am still slinking around the apartment, shirking from my to-do list, and staring woefully at the remaining boxes to be unpacked.  Sigh...am watching my holiday evaporate...

Part of the reason (OK, OK, I concede that it was a small part) was my abrupt initiation into the world of Mandarin - formal written & spoken Mandarin - in the form of my daughter's schoolwork <wide-eyed, horror look on face>.  

Before we get there, let's calm ourselves by looking at a recent cute photo of her.  Awww... she's lost her two front teeth...

OK, so the problem is, she's got these pseudo-bananas for parents.  Although we are yellow enough to be able to label ourselves Chinese without people calling us out like they did to Lance Armstrong (oh yah, juicy stuff, that story), we are not yellow enough to ... teach.  

I grew up on a diet of Hong Kong drama series and spoke Cantonese in my family.  YL grew up spouting Hakka with his grandparents.  We then went on to primary and secondary schools immersed in a mish-mash of English, Malay and Chinese dialects.  Whatever Mandarin we knew, we learned from osmosis from our environment, and in my case, listening to the occasional Mandarin songs in my teenage years.  I took Mandarin for 2 years at university in Canada, and I think that was when I started consciously to learn the language formally.  YL, having spent a considerable amount of time in Singapore, converses comfortably in Mandarin with his patients.  His spoken Mandarin is better than me - I'm miffed that I apparently have a Cantonese accent when I speak Mandarin, while I redeem myself by being able to read (slightly) more than him.

Now, add to that recipe the fact that Sophie skipped the whole of Primary 1 in Singapore, and she is now plunged right into the world of tingxie and pinyin and well...Mandarin.  She was reasonably proficient in the language before we left for Paris, but French very quickly replaced her Mandarin, and just before we came home last month, she could hardly understand or respond to simple instructions.  

In the first weeks, before a tuition teacher can be found, I cranked up my rusty Chinese dictionary skills and helped her with her Mandarin homework, and you can just see the sweat and hear the accelerated heartbeat at the end of each session.  My sweat and my heartbeat of course.  That girl has no idea what's coming up her alley.

Despite my anxiety, she scored 90% for her first tingxie (dictation), and seemed to be coping well in class.  There is still lots to catch up, and now I have books stacked up waiting to be read, characters waiting to be memorised, and exercises waiting to be done.  Waiting for me.  Not her.  She's the one correcting my pronunciation and writing lately.  

Let's hope that lasts.  Mummy is willing to be stupid if it will make you smart.