The post in which Alex gets registered for preschool

We received Alex's health report later in the week which meant that we were able to make the registration day at the Xia Da (university) Kindergarten. We were told that this is a sought after preschool for chinese people and it had an added benefit of being located on campus. Oh, and did I mention that it did not cost approaching US$10,000 per year as the local english school did? For preschool mind you!

And yet another student joined us to help us register - a process that would take upwards of 3 hours - and who would later become our semi-regular babysitter. Shi Jing Rong also biked off to get our various bits of paperwork photocopied for the process as we had no clue where the nearest copy place was.

We (or rather Shi Jing Rong) filled out an application form - thank goodness Alex had a chinese name "Gao Ya Li" as that made the process a little easier. Then we lined up with a hundred other parents to hand in the form, lined up in another line to hand in some evidence about where we lived and that Brett was employed by the university, lined up in another line to provide passport photos of Alex (a whole other system of photo sizes here - 1" means 1" square) and then we found out (at the end of 3 hours) that there was to be a preschool orientation the next weekend plus a home visit from her teachers. Hmm, might need the services of another student! After all that we went home and slept for 2 hours - still possibly jetlagged though it could also be the after effects of Sebastien's new wake-up time of 4am. Yep, he wants to start the day at 4am and no amount of cajoling will persuade him otherwise.Alex's class room: Small 1st Class: Xiao (小) Er (一) Class? (?)

Alex's kindergarten website: www.xdyey.com/
Alex's kindergarten year website: hi.baidu.com/xdyey

If you're really keen, throw them into google translate - it's how we survive :)