I’ve been asked by a number of Americans back in the States if the whole Chinese Tiger Mom phenomena is true. And my reply, “Oh, yes it is!!!!” Here are a few recent examples:

Today at my 2nd grader’s Parent/Teacher Conference, I heard a mother bragging to the teacher that she had her son (remember, he’s 7 years-old) memorize the first two columns of the Periodic Table.

I was talking to a 14 year-old Chinese girl recently, who told me that on weekdays, she is up at 5:00 and at seminary at 5:30, followed by school, then cram school and she is home at 10:00 p.m. She then studies for one more hour before lights out at 11:00 p.m. This growing teenage girl is getting a grand total of 6 hours sleep a night. This weekend, that same girl’s mom asked Cecily if she wanted to join the girl and her friend for a scheduled sleepover every Friday night in which the girls plan to study until 10:00 p.m., sleep, wakeup on Saturday morning and then study all day until 9:00 p.m.

And there is such thing as a Tiger Dad too–lest you think that only Tiger Moms are picked on. Recently, I spoke with an American father, who is only married to a Chinese woman. Obviously some of her Tigerness had rubbed off onto him, because he told me about his son. Last summer, between his 8th and 9th grade years, the son took a writing class. (Most Chinese kids spend their summers in academic classes to prepare them for the next year’s curriculum.) His son had written a paper for the class, but then his dad wrote the paper also so that the son could see how he would have written it. The father is a graduate of Duke law school and has been practicing law for umpteen years. And the 14 year-old son was somehow expected to compete with that!!!

Don’t get me wrong. I feel that American schools need to step it up and start expecting more from our students. BUT COME ON!!!! My kids won’t be memorizing the Periodic Table in early elementary school, nor will they be spending 17 hours a day in school or studying, nor will I expect them to pump out papers at 14 like a Juris Doctorate. But unfortunately, these are the kids at their school that they are competing with.

No wonder my kids feel a bit overwhelmed.

My 7 year-old is a major diva.  I don’t know where she gets it.  Whenever she sees a camera, she immediately strikes a pose.  Here are a couple of examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you tell which picture was taken by a professional photographer (i.e. my sister-in-law Julie; http://www.julieparkerphotography.com) and which one was taken by a slightly less than professional photographer (i.e. me)?

Expat child modeling is a big thing here in Taiwan, and given Elizabeth’s propensity for posing, we’ve recently discovered that she’s actually pretty good at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Yes, the shoes she’s wearing in the photo on the right are about eight sizes too big for her.)

But not only is she a big poser, but she’s also majorly into accessorizing.  She’s always putting on jewelry, painting her nails, putting little froo-froo’s in her hair.  But the worst part is that she has recently started sneaking accessories to school in her backpack; accessories that she knows I would never in a million years allow her to wear to school.  Hence the sneakery.

At Back-to-school Night, her teacher showed a bunch of pictures from the first weeks of school on a big screen in the classroom.  In every picture, regardless of the day or what she was wearing, Elizabeth had on some dorky gold and maroon striped removable sleeves.  They are kind of like socks for your arms, and they don’t match a single thing she owns.  I was mortified!

But what happened today takes the cake!  I was at the school and I realized it was about Elizabeth’s lunch time.  So I went into the cafeteria to wait for her so I could say hi.  When she walked into the lunchroom, over her clothes she was wearing (you’re never going to believe this) HER BATHROBE!  Now granted, it wasn’t a fuzzy, fleece American-style bathrobe.  Instead, it was a silky Asian-style bathrobe–but nevertheless, it was her bathrobe!  And she had been wearing it at school for half of the day.  I can just imagine her, the second she walked out of our yard on her way to the bus-stop, pulling it out of her backpack and proudly putting it on.

Needless to say, when she saw me she knew she was in trouble.  So she immediately grabbed her friend Amaranda, and using her as a human shield, started madly trying to disrobe.  The problem is that the frog button closures are not the easiest to undo, making it hard to take the thing off.  So by the time I walked over to her, she didn’t even have the top button undone.  When she saw me standing over her, she instinctively crouched down, hoping that the smaller she made herself the less I would see of her attire.

But saw it, I did.  And lets just say, I will be checking her backpack a little more carefully before she leaves for school from now on.

Yesterday I had my hair done.  My roots were really, really bad.  To the point of humiliation.  So I went to George Pais Hair Salon and had my trusty hairdresser Susan hook me up with some dye.  Susan has an assistant, I’m not sure of her name;  I’ll just call her Melon.  (Don’t laugh, I’ve met a Kiwi, an Apple and a Peach here in Taipei.  So calling someone Melon isn’t a huge stretch.)  So Susan and Melon were working on my bad roots and jabbering away in Chinese.  In fact, everyone in the place was jabbering away in Chinese; everyone but me.  I was quietly reading in English.

Susan and Melon are very meticulous with their coloring.  It takes the two of them together twice as long as it takes my hairdresser Papaya in Utah.  (OK, her name isn’t really Papaya, it’s Polly–as in wanna-cracker.)  So as they were working, I was completely zoned-out as to what was going on around me–entirely engrossed in my book.  I don’t want to say what the book was because I’m a little embarrassed.  All right, you talked me into it–it was Julie Andrews’ autobiography.  I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen The Sound of Music more times than any other movie.  I suppose I’ve revealed more embarrassing things about myself on this blog than admitting that I’m a huge Julie Andrews fan.

So I was zoned out–reading all about Julie’s childhood of poverty, when I noticed some sort of hullabaloo going on in the salon.  People were kind of running around; but since I’m used to reading with hullabaloo going on around me (i.e. my four kids) I just kept right on reading.  The hullabaloo increased in intensity, as did my resolve to finish the chapter I was on.  Then suddenly, Susan (who had left Melon to work on my hair alone for a few minutes) came running up to us and said that the salon was on fire!

I stood up and put my flip-flops on, which I had taken off to get a pedicure from Avocado while Susan and Melon were working away up top. (When I told my husband this story, I omitted the pedicure part, because he just doesn’t get the whole pedicure allure.)  It was then that I noticed flames coming out of the small kitchen that was off the main part of the upstairs salon.  Now at this point, you’re probably imagining me running screaming from the burning building, but that’s not what I did.  Instead, I just stood there looking at the flames and thinking to myself, Hmm, that’s something you don’t see everyday.  When suddenly, the gentleman in the chair next to mine grabbed a fire extinguisher from the corner and went to work on the fire.  At this point, Susan said that we should probably go downstairs.

Now here’s the part that reveals what a shallow person I am.  As we were walking down the stairs, my only thought was, But what about my hair?  I have a half-done dye job here!  As if reading my shallow thoughts, when we got to the bottom of the stairs, Susan told me to sit down in a nearby chair.  Then, as the firemen were running up and down the stairs with their hoses and axes, Susan and Melon finished coloring my roots.  It was all very dramatic, but in the end, I am not longer humiliated by my bad roots–notwithstanding George Pais Hair Salon’s charred kitchen.

Moral of the story:  Hair coloring knows no obstacle–including burning buildings.

I’m ashamed of myself.  I did a terrible thing today.  I did the very thing I try to teach my children not to do.   I let peer pressure get to me.  I gave in.   And I regret it.

There is a funny little cultural thing that the Chinese do.  It’s something that an American, in America would literally not be caught dead doing.  That is: wearing a hospital mask out in public.  You know the kind, doctors and nurses wear them.  In the U.S. sometimes people who are very ill, like those in current rounds of chemo, might consider wearing them in a hospital, but nowhere else.  Because frankly, people look ridiculous wearing them.

In Taiwan, the Chinese wear them like American’s wear sunglasses.  They’re everywhere.  I’m not sure when it started;  maybe with the avian flu outbreak in the early 2000’s, maybe earlier.  Some Chinese won’t leave their houses without one on.  And they don’t just wear the standard, hospital issued, disposable type.  Here in Taiwan, you can buy them everywhere, and not just disposable ones, but also wash-and-wear ones.  They come in designer prints: leopard print, zebra print, florals.  They are a fashion statement.  But trust me, even with a cool, funky print–they look just a ridiculous out in public as the standard Marcus Welby, MD type.

But just cough or sneeze in public one time without one on here, and you will get death glares like you’ve never seen before.

Notwithstanding the Chinese affinity for them, for the most part, westerners shun them.  And if a westerner so much as clears his throat in public, the Chinese will immediately start inching away; creating space between themselves and the horrible western killer germs.  If a westerner actually goes so far as to cough or sneeze in public, the Chinese don’t even try to hide their horror and will actually get up and move across the room, likely pulling masks out of their bags and immediately putting them on.

I’ve heard of westerners getting on a crowded, standing-room-only subway, letting out an exaggerated, fake cough because they know that suddenly the seat right in front of them will be vacated, leaving them a pre-warmed comfy place to sit.  One more loud cough and suddenly the seats on both sides will become available for elbow room and a place to put their bags.

So back to my shame.  My 7 year-old Elizabeth has been home from school sick all week.  She had standard flu symptoms: cough, fever, throwing up.  She seemed to be doing a little better this morning, with just a lingering cough, so I decided to send her to school.  Normally she rides the bus, but this morning I took her to school because her class was having a book sharing reading activity with parents.  We walked in the door of the school and Elizabeth immediately let out a loud cough.  I looked over and the Chinese lady at the information desk was giving us the death glare.  That’s when my resolve started to waver.  Elizabeth coughed again as we walked down the hall toward her classroom and a parent that was walking toward us took a step to the side, creating more distance between us as she passed.  I felt self-conscious.  Then Elizabeth did a tiny sniff, and that was all it took.  To our left was the nurses’ office.  I grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her through the doors.  Before I knew it, the words were coming out of my mouth, words I never thought I would utter.  “My daughter has a cold.  Do you have a mask she could wear in school today?”  I immediately hated myself and wished I could take the words back.  The Chinese nurse smiled and said, “Of course!” and stepped into her office.  I should have turned and walked out right then, but instead I stood there, with my head hung low like a 5 year-old that was just caught pulling the cat’s tail.  The nurse emerged from her office a few seconds later and covered my daughter’s beautiful face with a horrible mask.  Only Elizabeth’s blue eyes remained uncovered–revealing the fact that this was not an Asian child behind the mask, it was an American.  My heart sunk!

As we walked back out into the hall, I said a silent prayer that we wouldn’t pass another westerner.  When we arrived at Ms. Paradis’ 2nd grade classroom and Elizabeth started to hang up her backpack on her hook out in the hallway, I bent down to her level and said quietly, “Why don’t you take that mask off and put it in your pocket?”  I fully expected her to yank the thing off and say, “Thank you Mother!”  But instead she said, “No, I like it.  I want to keep it on.”  The words were like daggers piercing my American heart!

So there is my shame–in black and white for all the world to read.  Even now as I write, my beautiful blue-eyed daughter is probably wearing a mask out on the playground, or in the cafeteria, or maybe the library.  Today, because of me, she lost some of her American Yankee pride.  I’m a little heart-sick.

Six days ago, I wrote the follow as my Facebook status: “Who’s been eating all of the M&M’s out of the trail mix!  Seriously!  Fess up!”  Well, tonight the trail mix M&M thief was revealed.

Noah, Elizabeth, our friend Reid and I had settled down to a viewing of the movie “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” when I was suddenly hit with a bad case of the munchies.  I went to the pantry and grabbed a handful of trail mix from the giant Costco bag.  (You know the one.)  Moments later I was back on the couch munching away when Elizabeth conveniently slipped out of the room.  A few minutes later, she returned to the couch with her own handful of trail mix, but sans peanuts, almonds, cashews or raisins.  Yes, she was eating a giant handful of nothing but trail mix M&M’s.

Well at this point all my deductive reasoning kicked in and I realized that I had my thief sitting right next to me, caught red-handed (or should I say M&M handed?)!  And although I knew it was completely unsanitary, I pried the stolen M&M’s from her grubby little hands, and even though they were slightly damp from who-know what, I put them back into the giant Costco trail mix bag.  (This is something I would never do to my boys.  I would never put back any food they had touched for the mere fact that they spend a good amount of their day with their hands down their pants.)

So the Great Disappearing Trail Mix M&M Mystery has been revealed.  And even though the thief had those big blue eyes, and that cute little face, and could probably use the calories to put a little meat on her skinny little legs, it was dastardly nonetheless!

Lastly, I will not have my home overrun by a den of chocolate thieves (unless, of course, it’s me, stealing from my kids Halloween candy.)

I almost died today!  Don’t laugh, I’m serious!  I could have ended up on the evening news.

I was out for my walk this morning on the Monkey Trail, when I looked down the trail and saw what I thought, at first glance, was a giant cat standing in the middle of the trail about 50 feet in front of me.  Then I thought, No, that’s much to big to be a cat.  So my next thought was that it could be a cougar (I did graduate from BYU after all.  Go Cougs!)  Then I remembered that I was in Taiwan and not Utah, so the cougar theory was out.  Then I realized that it was a giant monkey; a Formosan Macaque to be exact.  Funny, given the name of the trail that monkey was all the way down to my third guess.  (When I told my 15 year-old this story, at this point she gave me the “You’re Such an Idiot” glare.)

I immediately stopped walking and hoped that the monkey would lumber off the trail.  In the meantime, I tried not to look him in the eye, because I had been warned that if you look a monkey in the eye, he will think that you want to attack and will take the offensive and attack you first.  Not good!  So I’m standing on the trail, trying to look nonchalant to a monkey when suddenly (and this is where the close call with death occurred) just to my right a monkey let out a blood-curdling scream!  I let out my own human version of a blood-curdling scream and jumped backward.  It was then that I realized that the screaming monkey was hanging from a branch close enough to my head to have been able to swat my right cheek.  All I could think of was that lady whose face was ripped-off by a chimpanzee.

Seriously not wanting to be the next face transplant recipient, I took a couple of more steps back and as I did I looked up.  To my shock and horror there were countless monkeys all around me in the trees above my head. I felt like Jane from Disney’s Tarzan when she finds herself surrounded by monkeys in the jungle.  I started whimpering a little and looked around to see if there were any people in sight; no people, only monkeys.  So I ducked my head, tried not to look any of them in the eye and tip-toed forward.

After a half a dozen steps, I looked up and there above my head was the tiniest baby monkey I have seen in Taiwan, looking me right in the eye with a death glare.  Another whimper, a quickened pace and a racing heart and I was outta there.  And so ended my close call with death by monkey.

And then, later on my walk I was almost hit by a car.  But I have to say that death by car wouldn’t be nearly as cool to have in an obituary as death by monkey.