today the triplets joined a cantonese speaking playgroup. it is very local, and in a very colonial old building, with high ceilings, lots of space and sunshine. interestingly, there are only five kids in the class, and four of them are blonde. the other blondie is charlie, who is sebastian’s friend annie’s younger brother. you have seen pictures of charlie before, he is the trip’s age, quite verbal and determined, but not in the same way that annie is determined. (if you forget who annie is, go back to early july when i took them for shoe shine pictures, remember the shoe shines? the girl with the curls is annie. always has been.)

so the four walked into the cantonese school quite confidently, looking like blonde bounty hunters. they were wary of the talking puppet (how come the hands were moving?) but liked the exercises, and the learning. one of the fun learning counting exercises was hiding a bucket of squeaky little plastic ducks and then each child was given a bucket and told to collect the little rubber duckies. they happily raced around the room, trying to recall where they had hidden the yellow escapees. then it was back to the circle, where everyone counted their bounty. yat, yee, sam, sey, mm, lok…

of course the triplets aren’t counting like that, but they were getting the point.

at one point the teacher had the kids sit down and brought out something covered in aluminium foil. having been to my share of these playschool things, i cast my practised eye to the the clock and thought, hmm, a little early for snack, but maybe since it’s the first day…

she asked everyone to put their fingers under the foil and feel the content. i caught the colour and thought it was chips. but the substance made me think of tofu.

she ripped off the foil and i found myself staring at duck feet ( i actually thought they were chicken at first). REAL DUCK. feathers, quacking…that sort of duck. except for the feet (legs?) were no longer attached to the body and the feet (legs?) were definitely in the deceased category.

the teacher pulled out some paper and paint, and picked up a duck foot, and said that we should daub the foot in the paint, then press it on the paper. she placed a foot on the green, yellow, blue, purple, brown, red and black paint and told us to go to it. i picked up a foot and sela let me know she would not be touching it. for whatever reasons. fine. i gamely pressed on.

and of course, at a time like this, i am looking around the colours and wondering,

"hey, i’m working with duck, aren’t they supposed to serve it with orange?"

and then we had snack. biscuits and plums.