There's a girl in Noah's class whose parents we have become friendly with. Their house is the only one we have visited for 'playdates', foreign concept in TW. How should I describe "Hope"? She is sweet, articulate, loud, well-meaning, but sometimes out of control. Paul and I are a little scared of her because we don't feel that we can effectively control the situation when she and Noah are together. They can be extremely wild to the point that it actually intimidates Ben.
One day, Hope's parents asked us to watch her for the evening. We were having a dinner party with friends visiting from Taipei and Tainan, so we knew it would be a little stressful to have her here as well, but we didn't know how to say no. For one thing, I am happy that they felt comfortable entrusting their daughter to us. This kind of casual babysitting request is very uncommon in Taiwan. For another, it's nice to help one another and we really like them. Lastly, Hope already thought she was coming, so it would be a huge disappointment to tell her no. So we took up the challenge.
Paul knew that in order to keep some order, he'd have to be firm and set up rules. So from time to time during the evening, you'd hear Paul speaking in completely fluently and firm Chinese to her, either stopping her from doing something or warning her of consequences.
It was quite amazing to hear him talking so well. He said thanks to the feeling of desperation, he was pretty happy to have the opportunity given by a 4-year-old :)
What's funny is that Hope likes to pretend that we are her "American parents", and she'll fake-speak to us in English. It's totally cute and very endearing to hear her attempt to speak, literally, in tongues. She'll follow her tongue-speech with a portion of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". And if you speak to her in English, she'll respond with "yeah". She really wants to fit in and receive approval from us.
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