International School or not????

Today Ethan's parents started to have the search for apartments with the local agent provided by daddy's company. Well, we went to view a few places and so far only 3 places have the kindergarten inside the community.

One was Montessori Children's House and we had taken a short tour view with the principal who explained about the classes to us. For Ethan's age even though he was born in 2005 but because he is a year end baby so he has to enter the junior class which is for baby starting from 1 to 3 years old. So basically they are playing, listening to stories, learn some alphabets, numbers and etc. For the class of 3 to 4 years old, they are learning to write, do some art work and etc. The principal told us that they only accept maximum 15 kids per class. One teacher and two assistants in each class. So the ratio will be 1 adult take care of 5 kids. Medium of teaching is all in English.

Second was Yew Chung International School. They took 3 villas space to form a kindergarten. Since we have no appointment so hope that tomorrow we will have the chance to view and talk to the headmaster.

Another one we didn't go and look at it because of the rain. Mainly also due to the possibility of us choosing to stay in this community is extremely low. Not saying that the apartment is no good, it is because the facilities are still not yet ready. As the service apartment, Pinnacle Century Park is new so some of the facilities are not yet ready.

At night time, mummy went to the Internet to search for other international schools in Shanghai surrounding the area we plan to stay. Well, the school fees is really one of our concern. Maybe if using USD to convert to RMB might still be quite reasonable. However, using it to convert to MYR, it is crazy expensive! One need about MYR5k to 6k per month for 5 full time basis ie 8.30am til 3.30pm. Daddy said it is crazy to pay so much money just to let Ethan play. Besides the money concern, there is another issue which is that the international school mainly focus in English which mummy doesn't like. Mother wants to let Ethan learn Chinese while we are here in Shanghai. Mother feels that Chinese language is more difficult to learn compared to English. So maybe have to inform the local relocation agent to search for the local kindergarten for us as well.