Let's speak some English shall we?

Tina, Jilly and I went on a little day excursion with Aiden and his Mother today. We were waiting outside our apartment complex for her to pick us up and Tina received a phone call, and … it was her, Aidens mom. Her name is Xiang. So Tina answers the phone, “Wei ni hao Aidens mama!” ha. Jilly and I got a kick out of that and thought it was so funny that she referred and called her Aidens mama, even directly to her. When she got off the phone, I asked her, “Tina. What is Aidens mothers name?” and she just looked at me, then at Jilly, and back at me and said... “I don't know”, in a tone and with an expression as if to say “should I know?” ha.

We got into the car and noticed right away how quiet Aiden was, because at school it is quite the contrary. He almost looked sad, so we asked him what was wrong and Tina told us that he was sad because they were so late picking us up. Ha. I thought that was so sweet, especially because they were about 4 minutes late. :)

They took us down to walking street and we walked up to the big pagoda there. It was beautiful. A beautiful pagoda and the walk up there was scenic as well. I felt like I was in a rainforest. It's so lush and green. It was really a splendid day. We didn't do anything elaborate or anything that required a whole lot of planning. We just walked. We walked down around walking street. They took us up to a neighborhood where there were a lot of older homes built years ago but also many newer homes scattered in around them. Xiang explained to us some of the history that was there. She was born and raised in Zhongshan so it was neat to have her there with us. We continued our walk and went down to a big lake with a handful of big pagoda pavilions and willow tree's, and bridges. It was beautiful.

And of course... the reason we agree to these outings (not really, but maybe a little bit). We then went to the Shangri La Hotel. We have been once before with the same family only that time they took ALL of us out to eat. This time, it was just Jilly and I. Oh my goodness. I had a food baby last time we ate there, and I certainly had a food baby this time. But you can't help it. It's unavoidable because these sweet, great people are paying a fortune for us to eat at this International Hotel with a Western Buffet that is known all over the world, so 2 plates of food just won't suffice. Period. Even if we wanted it to. If there was ever a period where I did not have anything in front of me they told me to go get more. And there is simply no arguing. 1) Because it's not easy to argue in a language you hardly know and 2) because they are paying for you to eat. So Jilly and I obliged... :) It was worth the pain, and the food baby, and waking up the next morning still never wanting to eat anything again in our lives.

Such a great enjoyable day though. I'd rather be out with the locals walking around the city than in our flat skyping family or updating my blog, or running, or reading, or any of the other activities I find myself doing on Saturday days. (I love skyping my family, don't get me wrong :)

The main purpose of our Saturday excursions with Aiden and his mom are because his mom is smart and she knows how to work the system. So, what she does is she offers to take a couple of us teachers out each week to museums or to dinner or just out to see the city so that she can take advantage of us (the English teachers) while we are here and get Aiden to speak as much language with us as possible. So during our walk today, she just had him drill us with questions and questions and questions. Most of which consist of something like, “What is that?” pointing to a pillar, or a tree, or something we know he already knows :) but it makes his mom happy to just see him speaking English. So that is what we do. We just talk to Aiden, the whole time. And it's fun. I love it. He can be a pain in the rear during class but when we are outside of class, he is so bright. He is such a smart kid and speaks and understands English so well. He's only 5! But we have full on conversations. No problem. And on the flip side, he teaches us Chinese. I love it.