Our trip to Shanghai: Football and Taxi drivers

Football and taxis are a great way to practice speaking in chinese in Shanghai.

The day we arrived in Shanghai Spain was playing the final of the Euro 2012 against Italy. By then, I was already over France's defeat to Spain 2-0 in quarter finals. Spain won, and Shanghai sport apparel stores were displaying prominently the Spanish team's colors.

Spain's victory turned out to be also a great way to break the ice and practice our Chinese with taxi drivers in Shanghai. Taxis are affordable in Shanghai, it was our main way around the city. Shanghai taxi drivers are polite, patient and helpful, especially when we gave them directions making mistakes in the pronunciation and tones.

As soon as taxi drivers heard that Cristina was from Spain, a big smile lit up their face to congratulate the Spanish team on their perfomance. We were able to talk about Spanish players, the local soccer team Shanghai Shenhua, the poor state of the French team, etc.

We all know that football is really a global sport, and helps you connect with people around the world, wether they work in a factory or are CEO. What we learned in Shanghai is that football is also a great way to practice speaking chinese with taxi drivers.

Princesses Learn French: Beauty and the Beast is our 5th book

Beauty and the Beast is the 5th book of our iPad and iPhone app, Princesses Learn French.

In Beauty and the Beast, children learn about different rooms in the house. The dialogues with English and French audio are structured around the expression "Where are you?", "Where is she?", "Where am I?". It helps children learn the expression in the context of a story.

The words in the story are reinforced through games and a song. All the French vocabulary of the story is available for review in the "My Cards" section of the app.

The app is free, and the 1st book, Snow White, is free. The other books are available for purchase. Once a book is downloaded, you can have it for free on all other devices.

Here are a few screenshots of the book.

Read section of the book

Sing section

Game section

Our other iPad and iPhone apps are also available for download:

Princesses Learn Chinese

Princesses Learn Spanish

Princesses Learn Sight Words

Our trip to Shanghai: Finding a tutor to learn Chinese

Having secured a summer camp for Elena and Pablo in Shanghai, Cristina and I were looking to find a tutor so that we could make progress during the two weeks there. We found Gloria Li.

Gloria was a great teacher and we had a lot of fun together. We spent 2 hours in the morning practicing our Chinese. Gloria also helped us better understand Chinese culture. She shared with us anecdotes about Shanghai, its people and about daily life there. And we were lucky enough to taste her amazing food, including her homemade dumplings. She wrote a great book to learn Chinese which we recommend: “You can speak Chinese”.

Here are a few simple tips to find a tutor in Shanghai to learn Chinese, if you do not live in Shanghai:

1. Go through online classifieds. classifieds.chinadaily.com has several teachers looking to give Chinese lessons

2. Ask friends for recommendations

3. Do a free lesson via Skype to see which teacher is the right fit

4. Commit to a first lesson once in Shangai to evaluate of you have a good time.

We certainly had a great time. Thank you to Gloria who had a lot of patience and helped us make some progress!

Princesses Learn Spanish: Beauty and the Beast is live!

We just released the 5th book of our iPad and iPhone app, Princesses Learn Spanish.

In Beauty and the Beast, children learn about different rooms in the house. The dialogues with Spanish audio are structured around the expression "Where are you?", "Where is she?", "Where am I?". It helps children learn the expression in the context of a story. The words in the story are reinforced through games and a song. All the Spanish vocabulary of the story is available for review in the "My Cards" section of the app.

Here are some screenshots of the book.

Also available for download are Princesses Learn Chinese and Princesses Learn French. The app is free and the 1st book is free. The other books are available for purchase.

Our trip to Shanghai: Learning Chinese with Karaoke

We have been taking online classes via Skype to learn Chinese for the last few months now. Our teacher is Han Yue, from Wu Han (about 800km from Shanghai). She came over to Shanghai to meet us and we spent the week-end together.

Yue and her friend Maggy took all of us to KTV Karaoke on Sunday. The place was fully booked on Friday and Saturday evening, so no other choice. This place had close to 100 private rooms with sofas, food, drinks and karaoke entertainment systems. Several were filled, even on a Sunday morning at 9am! Yue told us that the karaoke places were popular across China, among friends on week-ends and for birthday parties.

Elena and Pablo took the mics to sing all their Chinese songs they learned so far. Here is one of their videos:

Songs are a great way to learn a language. Karaoke in Shanghai just takes it to another level.

Princesses Learn Chinese: Beauty and the Beast, our 5th Book

Apple just approved the release of our 5th book in the Princesses Learn Chinese app for iPad, iPhone and iPod.

Beauty and the Beast helps children learn different names of family members in the context of a story, games and a song. Children are also exposed to new expressions, in the context of dialogues within the story. Here below are some screenshots.

Enjoy learning Chinese with Beauty and the Beast.

You can download our free app Princesses Learn Chinese. Also available are Princesses Learn Spanish and Princesses Learn French.

Our trip to Shanghai: Finding a summer camp for our kids

Visiting a city is challenging with kids. Especially with a 4-year old who constantly asks for “Papa, prends-moi sur tes epaules” (“Dad, take me on your shoulders”).

We were lucky to find in Shanghai “Peekaboo”, a school in the heart of the former French Concession. It is a Chinese school, that opened up in 2010 a section for French and English speaking  children. Pauline, the French administrator, welcomed Elena and Pablo for 2 weeks of summer camp.

Pablo and Elena had a great time there, dividing their time between activities in English and Chinese, while practicing their French with many French kids there.

As parents, we were able therefore to study Chinese in the morning, stroll along the shaded streets of the French Concession, visiting the markets of Taikan lu, and have lunch in some great Shanghainese restaurants.

After picking up Elena and Pablo in the afternoon from the summer camp, we took advantage to visit all together one area of Shanghai every day.

Thank you Pauline and Peekaboo for welcoming our kids to the camp!

www.peekabookindergarten.com

Trip to Shanghai: Practicing Chinese in People Square park

Walking around People Square was a great way for Elena and Pablo to practice their Mandarin. The lotus pond is beautiful, people are relaxed and enjoy the views in the shade.

Several people came to us, asked us were we were from, took pictures with Elena and Pablo. We had the opportunity to introduce ourselves and make some small talk in Mandarin.

We met a 6-year old Chinese boy there, whose English given name was “Bluesky”. He told us he is learning English by talking with travelers in Shanghai. He even had a name card to introduce himself. We love the idea: learning a language by practicing in the parks.

On a funny note, we discovered in People Square a gathering of over a thousand parents. Each parent had a written page, usually taped on an umbrella, with some information about their son or daughter. We were told it is nowadays difficult for young adults to have the time to find a spouse with their busy work schedule. Therefore, many parents in Shanghai do the legwork and go to People Square, talk to each other about their children, with the goal of setting up dates for them.

This is full service parenting!

Trip to Shanghai: Shanghai Ni Hao

We made it to Shanghai! Two weeks of discovery of the city and its people. The trip was way less painful we thought. 15-hour flight, half of it spent sleeping, which allowed us to be in decent shape when we got to Pudong Airport in Shanghai.

Thanks to a good friend of ours, Jim Zhang and his father welcomed us and took us to a great Chinese restaurant. Jim helped as a translator with his father, when our one year of learning Chinese was not good enough.

The food was unbelievable, tasty, light, fresh. A wide variety of amazing Shanghai specialties. And we love food. We were also treated to Moutai, a very good traditional Chinese liquor.

We are very thankful to the Zhang family. What a better way to reinforce our desire to learn as much as we can about the culture and the people here.

Shanghai, here we are!