Another One Bites the Dust

On to ...... nanny number 4! We decided last week to let our recently hired nanny go, and hire a new one. We feel much better. Nanny number 4 is sweet, nice, and friendly. She seems interested in Sophia. She tells me about the day and what Sophia does. She commented that she didn't want to clean if it meant not paying attention to Sophia. I can live with that. I told her, "I just want to know that Sophia played, read books, and had a good time. " I just want her happy when I get home, so that I can go to school with peace-of-mind. The other nanny didn't seem very caring and we had that bad intuitive feeling. She was a good cook, but definitely not a stellar cleaner. It's hard to leave your child in someone elses hands for 10 hours a day! Again, no one told me that being a parent was going to be so hard!

The new nanny, on her first day, told us (through our rough dictionary translation) that Sophia was "well-brought-up," "a miracle" and a "magnet." The last one, we think she was saying that she is magnatized to her hippo toy. We're not quite sure if that translated correctly. Hmm...

This weekend, Sophia had her first sleepover, since Joe and I both had to supervise the lock-in at our school. I got to go late at least, after Sophia went to bed at our friend's house. The lock-in wasn't so bad. You'd imagine that highschoolers would be trying to sneak off and do drugs or make-out, but no, our kids are so darn innocent! They just hung out and get this, played hide-and-seek. The best thing about teaching here - the kids! Seriously, what seniors in America play hide-and-seek as their most exciting activity.

We went to the international brunch at our school today also. Lots of food from all over the world. This year it was picnic style. Pretty nice, but we were beat so we didn't stay long.

An observation from Joe today - I sent him off to the market to get some plant fertilizer and soil. (Our nanny is going to rescue our newly-bought plants from our killer hands.) Anyway, he comes back and says, "We are so spoiled."

"What do you mean?" I ask. He was walking through a market area near our house. There are tons of individual shops. Each shop carries one type of product. There's the cookie shop. The fruit and vegetable market. The school supply shop. The toy shop. The home cleaning supply shop. The tool shop. You get the picture. He realizes that he's in a foreign country, shopping in a market completely different from any we've experienced in the U.S., and he realizes that it's completely normal to him. We don't even realize how different our lives are these days. It's funny how being in a foreign culture becomes your norm. We're spoiled because we don't even realize our surroundings any more. Whether it's good or bad, I don't know.