Who really knows what's going on here?

Well, as some of you have already heard, my very helpful informant--the one who told me that there was no school on Wednesday either--he was wrong! I am beginning to wonder how anything gets done here. I think I need to start drinking tea in the morning instead of coffee. I am now of the opinion that they read tea leaves to figure out what the day hold. Maybe it's like a magic 8 ball, swish the tea around and ask your cup "will there be school today?" My coffee grounds just aren't cutting it!
In other news, Elijah has stopped screaming when we take him to school. I think that is a good sign. His teachers even said he sat with the other kids for a while. I'm really not quite sure what he does while I'm not there. But, in the end, neither he nor Isabella are seeming to pick up either speaking or listening in Chinese. Isabella can pick out a few words as words she recognizes, but she doesn't know what they mean...she's not even close!
But her reading is really taking off. At first she could read it in the text book, but didn't feel confident to read it from a "book." Now she's really figuring it out, and is asking to try to read different books. She loves to read to Lydia.
Lydia is getting faster and faster. We can hardly keep up with her. Right now I have a big comforter thrown across the stairs. It really frustrates her, but even if she slips on it there is a little cushion from the hard tile and a blunting of the sharp stair edges.
And the last of our "fascinating" (ha!) life, I cut my own hair this week! That was pretty scary. As you know, my hair is really long and had gotten so heavy that my scalp was hurting. Kinda weird, I know. So I did a little research on the web, and thought, "hey, I can do this." Because there is no way on God's green earth that I'm getting my hair cut again in China! And I still have another three months before we our out again. So I flipped my head over and hacked away. Tim ended up having to straighten out the ends, like I said my hair is still really long. But in the end, it turned out not bad. I think we can manage to cut my for the rest of our time here. I do need to figure out how better to fix it though. And for the other hair cut this week, I gave Elijah a bowl cut. The reason I thought this was a good plan was because we keep his hair short in the summer, but in the winter we don't like to cut it so much. So the back and around the ears are really hard to maintain. But Tim wasn't real thrilled with that, somebody please tell me that the bowl cut is back "in" in the States! Oh, well, hair grows! (Except Isabella's.)
Well, the coffee is calling...the kid's are already at school, so I don't need to drink my tea!