Thursday, May 24, 2018

Where is Mona Lisa?


The school organizes a stage performance for the kids every year. This year, only students from elementary classes participated, whereas the kids from kindergarten stayed with the parents.

The theme was about the portrait of Mona Lisa, La Joconde in French. Students were acting as tourists visiting The Louvre Museum. They were looking for the Portrait, all the performance were mainly through singing. What struck me was, that some students were chose to sing solo from time to time, and they sang badly sometimes. I mean, some were out of tunes. Maybe the goal was to make students participate, it didn't have to be perfect. This is unthinkable during my times as elementary student. Teachers at that time always chose students with perfect voices. There were singing competitions for every grade, and the winners got to represent the school for a higher level competitions. French school do not organize singing competition apparently.

During the performance, I suddenly felt that my kids are so lucky to be in this country. All those paintings, monuments in Paris, are from their heritage, and they could just go see them. I mean, I'm not sure Malaysia has created any great arts for the human history.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Mom, we would like to go home for lunch

One day, my daughter asked me why can't I bring them home for lunch.

"Mom, all my friends go home for lunch at least once a week, why do we have to go all the times?"
"It is very unfair, I hate going to the canteen. Sometimes I have to sit alone because those boys won't 
want me to sit with them, and all my girlfriends went home."
"You are working from home anyway, why can't you pick us up for lunch just like other mothers?"

I sighed.
While we are advised to not compare our kids to others', we parents are being compared to.
I don't know how they do it, but there sure are a bunch of parents able to send and pick up their kids, without ever going to the after school classes or canteen.

Kids here have school in the morning, a long lunch break, then resume the class in the afternoon. (In Malaysia, kids go to school either in the morning or in the afternoon, not the whole day). For lunch, they could either go home, or go to the canteen. Kids who go home, get picked up around 11:35am, and go back to school at around 1:35pm. Yes! Two hours lunch break!

I do not have 2 hours lunch break + 20 minutes for the drive. So I immediately said no to her. She was so disappointed, she kept asking, once a week. I was so upset, and torn apart. 
Yes, sometimes I work from home, but I have made that extra efforts to go pick them up right after school so that they don't have to stay in the after school class waiting for us.
But, when they are at home, sometimes I can't 100% concentrate on works. They fight, they scream, they ask for things, they want to share things with me....even though I told them million times that I AM WORKING!!!  They should consider themselves lucky because they only stay late twice a week in school, but still, they want more.

I felt that I have done my best. My lunch time is for myself. I get to each whatever I want, at the time I want, even in front of the computer continuing working, it was purely my choice. I do not want to put an alert to go pick them up, cook for them, eat with them, clean the dishes, entertain their demands. I need a break from them, isn't it too much too ask??

But, I yielded, as always, guilt to disappoint my child, guilt that they don't get to eat lunch at home while many others can. We did it once, it went well, they were happy, they asked for more, and I said we shall see.

The kids just drained up my energy. I don't even have any time/energy left to blog.