the delegate from denmark

Saturday, before chair skating, Sam went to his first Model United Nations conference at ISB. Rob and I were happy that he wanted us to sit in. Rob watched for a while then came home and let me go over to watch. What a great program. I hope Sam will continue it throughout high school. Sam gets to represent Denmark. He thought that was fun because our good friends the Sevys are headed there next.

Sunday night, the branch scout troupe held their court of honor. Sam and Ben got their Polar Bear awards for camping out below freezing. I'm glad I don't have to do that. The boys love camping, especially when it's cold.
Monday morning it was actually warm enough that Grant wanted to play outside for a few minutes on our way home from the clubhouse. Usually it is so windy that we just play in the indoor playground.

Tuesday Xiao Chen came so I could go over to ISB to help out in Mary's classroom. Here they are gathered around the table, making pancake batter. Mary loves to take my camera and be the photographer. It's fun to see things from her perspective.

Our friends from the branch.
Mary's teacher and Mary's other friend from the branch. There are four kids from the branch in Mary's class.

We fried up the pancakes and sold and served them to the kindergarten's fifth grade buddies. It was part of their unit on..something like... buying, selling, trading.
Here's Mary's fifth grade buddy.

When I got home from ISB Xiao Chen told me that Granty and Caitlin were "bu ting hua", not listening. I asked what they did. She said Granty was playing with some of my books and Caitlin kept asking her to take her to the clubhouse. I was kind of irritated at that because it didn't seem serious enough to complain about. I asked Xiao Chen if she could come on Friday, and as I thought she would do, she hemmed and hawed. Not sure how to spell that. Lately she has only agreed to come if Rob calls to ask her. I was so disappointed because Friday was the 100th day of school and I wanted to go help out in Mary and Olivia's classes. There was also an early morning assembly that I needed to attend. I felt like it was a good time to tell Xiao Chen that I needed to find a new ayi. I hated to let her go, but I didn't want to ask her to come full-time again because she just didn't seem interested in coming anymore, and she didn't seem to enjoy Caitlin and Grant. More about this later.

Friday morning William, Caitlin, Grant and I made it to the ISB cafeteria in time for Mary's 8:30 a.m. performance. The kindergarten classes were hosting the weekly assembly. Each class took turns performing a Chinese poem or song. Mary's class sang one of my favorites Xin Nian Hao

"good new year." Mary is easy to spot. We didn't get the memo about the blue shirts. We thought we were supposed to do Chinese dress. I was pleased that Mary didn't mind standing out a bit.