A Little on Ally

At this point in time, the three words that come to mind when I think of Alison are:

Gu-Niang She is definitely very girly, very gentle, very gu niang lor. When she goes swimming, she exclaims, " Ah ah, my hair's wet !" when anyone nearby jumps into the pool and splashes around. How more "gu niang" can you get right?

Chinese Maniac She's absolutely enthralled by the language now. She prefers Chinese songs over English. She requests that we speak to her in Mandarin frequently. Her command of the language is way better than Mark and myself at 3+. She can even manage simple sentences. As her memory is very good, she can even sing rather complicated tongue twister type Mandarin songs. We realised that she would concentrate really hard when the song is playing, silently muttering the words, then surprise us with the full version soon enough. Am rather pleased with this development and am seizing all opportunities to get her acquainted with the language. Mark and I take Mandarin tuition once every week and she sits in in the beginning, reading her own Mandarin book. We figured she became interested because she saw us learning the language, and possible also because her favourite teacher in school is her Mandarin teacher. She surprised us one day too by saying that she wants to learn Mandarin because she's Chinese!

Queen of Imagination Ally prefers imaginary stories to those told from the storybook. It's very amusing. She will close her eyes and listen as we weave up the wierdest, yet vivid stories of fairies, wizards, deep dark forests, unicorns, dragons. Or even of snakes who tickle monkey's armpits. The wierder the better, the more magic in it, the better. You know she's listening real intently too, as when you stop, she will help fill in the blanks. She can tell you her own imaginary stories too but they are usually a combination of storylines from what we've told her before.