Patriotic Beth

Beth can recite the pledge in Mandarin!

It gave me a funny feeling to watch her stand at attention, hand to heart, and recite the pledge from start to finish in her cutely flawed Mandarin accent. I'd almost forgotten the words myself, and now I have a point of reference. Hubby was suitably impressed. After all, he hardly speaks a word of Mandarin.

On Tue (eve of National Day), we were planning on sending Beth to a friend's place so she could hang out there the whole day. Beth had her own ideas however. After we'd written a note in her school notebook to inform her teacher that she would not be in school on Tue, and after we'd agreed on the play arrangements with our friend, Beth decided when she woke up on Tue that she MUST go to school first. She had to wear red-and-white, she explained, and there was going to be an ND celebration in school. Any other activities were secondary.

So sheepishly, hubby had to send her off to school and pick her up again after her nap and send her off to friend's place in the afternoon. Beth's Chinese teacher Xiao Laoshi, who has been largely responsible for Beth's newly gained ability to converse in Mandarin, was tickled to see us.

While hubby and I were out running errands, Beth was at the Singapore Swimming Club playground. Then she had dinner at Mac's with friend and her hubby (whose children are studying in Oz and who dote on her like a granddaughter), went back to friend's place and demonstrated yoga moves and watched Animal Planet, and still had energy to greet me with a lively recounting of the day's events when she got home after 10 pm (by which time I was half asleep in bed).