G missed her first day of school ever today. She was up with a low grade fever last night and she's just kind of been lethargic. So we are hoping she doesn't get worse. At least I feel comfortable knowing where the doctor is now and how all that works. Except today is, of course, Friday. Nothing like having a sick kid over the weekend--no matter where you live.

D had his first good day at school today. The teacher gave me the two thumbs up when she sent him out the door to me and it made my day. He was so excited and proud of himself. He said "I talked at school Mommy. I only cried for two minutes." Good for him.

Yesterday we learned that there is an audio button on the remote control that changes the language on the Disney Channel. ! How awesome is that? So we can choose between Cantonese, English or Mandarin. We were very excited when we figured out that we could get in in English. And then after 5 minutes we got really bored with it. It turns out the G and D (especially G) want to hear it in Chinese. We agreed we'd listen to Mandarin since that's what she is learning at school. I would say it's 80% Mandarin and 20% English. It's like watching Dora in English with a little Spanish, except it's Mandarin with a little English. So it's really good for her. And it is so funny for me to catch myself throughout the day singing different Playhouse Disney theme songs in "Chinese". I have no idea what I am saying at all. And it's totally a reflex thing. It makes me laugh at myself.

A month ago when we first got here and first had this Chinese speaking Disney Channel, we honestly didn't know if it was Cantonese or Mandarin. Could not tell. And some of the shows are subtitled. Canto subtitled in Mandarin and Mandarin subtitled in Canto. Neither B nor I could hear the difference or see the difference between the characters. Now we are starting to get it. We are both now able to see and hear the differences.

We had a deep thoughts conversation about how an Asian person (with no prior exposure) hears and sees Western/Romanized languages. Like is the difference between Japanese and Chinese the equivalent to English and Russian or Spanish and Finnish? And is the difference between Canto and Mandarin more similar, and equivalent to, say, the slighter differences between Dutch and German or Spanish and Italian?

We don't even have to be drinking to come up with this stuff.