Up the stairs! Up and down!

Communication is sometimes a bit complicated when you don’t have a common language. Today at the playground we met a really friendly Chinese grandfather with his one-year-old grand-daughter. He was smiling to Benjamin and speaking to him and to me so softly and friendly but we didn’t understand a word. I tried to communicate him Benjamin’s age and name, I guess he understood. Then we just kept smiling and waving to each other. That moment I really regretted that I wasn’t able to communicate more.

Hello Dad!

Luckily Benjamin doesn’t find it too hard to go out and play with the kids even he doesn’t understand what they are saying. We’ve also found couple of Chinese parents at our compartment that speak English and they have been most helpful. One of my new Chinese friends even told me about a local market place, where you can find kids’ clothes and toys for a nice price. We went there yesterday, and yes, you can really find there about everything you can imagine. I was exhausted after five minutes… We really need to go there again when I’m not that tired. We found a nice “bike” for Benjamin, he’s been riding other kids bikes whenever he gets the chance to do it!

Lately, Benjamin has been speaking more and more English. I guess it’s partly because we have been seeing more and more our new English speaking friends from the school. “Up there, up there!” he goes all the time. He wants to get up to hang the clothes, wash dishes with mom, get to play with the computer or then he has something completely different in his mind. “Up and down, up and down!” he goes the stairs (luckily we don’t have any stairs inside the house…), “up and down!” – gym with mom etc. After watching an episode of Sesame Street about sharing, he says “train” and “mine, mine!” And then of course “more, more”. Oh no…