The kids started going back to school in early May and it has been very successful, without any COVID cases, with Hannah joining the swimming team and doing some intensive training twice a week, and with extracurricular activities too, particularly music (piano and recorder). They are very happy at school and the teachers are all fantatic. Leah is a bit slower to make friends, but she's still happy. She's actually ahead of the class in some areas after the 4 months of tutoring she had earlier, and she likes school.
For the first time since Shenzhen (when I would take Hannah on my bike to kindergarten and then cycle off to work), I am involved in the school run (previously Andrea would take the kids to German school, work from there and bring them back) doing the morning trip for Hannah, Leah and a neighbour whilst Andrea does the afternoon trip. Though it is not the most environmentally friendly reason it is much cheaper than the bus, much quicker, and also nice to spend time with the children in the car.
The children are very talkative in the car, and just like it was interesting to be so involved in knowing what the children were doing in class whilst they were learning online, hearing them talking in the car provides interesting perspectives on how they are growing up, what they are talking about with their friends, and so on. So the conversations are often about friends, YouTube celebrities, or just playful joking. Our kids seem to adopt strange Kenyan accents when talking to their friends, though they are able to drop it at home (if they want to, often they don't want to!).
In the evenings and at weekends the children continue to love playing, usually downstairs, but sometimes indoors, usually physical games with running around, hiding, bikes and other activities. Sometimes they do role plays, and they quite like pretending to be teachers and students and setting up a classroom and giving each other work to do, and helping each other out. They've done some more shows to whoever is willing to watch in the apartment (including selling tickets and putting up posters), like playing investigators or other games and generally enjoy exploring. Leah particularly still likes playing with her horses, unicorns or lego sets. There's been fashion shows and face painting and all sorts. It is wonderful to observe and sometimes fun to participate.
There are still the frequent issues with watching TV or playing computer games, which we try to limit, which is a shame since they play so nicely, and they even enjoy reading when they get around to it (which is not as common as it should be, though we are trying). Sometimes the friends can be a great influence encouraging reading or playing together, other times not so good - with the demand to play computer games against each other, or watching TV at their house a lot; let alone the influence of accents and need to keep on information regarding the latest YouTube celebrity.
I suppose this is what it is like now as kids start to grow up, experience peer pressure and parents start to lose some influence over their lives. Coping with that might be a blog for another day!
