Once we accepted the offer for Kaia’s new school, we got paired up with another family who also has a child who will be entering kindergarten, the same class as Kaia. The couple reached out to us, and we set up a Whatsapp group and a play date at a nearby playground to meet today. The couple also invited a few other families and their kids to the playground so not only could all the kids play together, but Chris and I could also meet the parents.

On my calendar, I allocated about 1.5 hours for the meetup/play date. But we ended up going for close to three hours. It was a pretty good time — the parents all seemed like kind, friendly, genuine people. We were all united in our mission to ensure not only rigorous academics for our children, but also true Chinese language immersion. Though the school does have a Spanish track, none of those families were at this organized play date.

Once we got back home, Chris said to me, “See, you finally got what you wanted: a parent community. It’s just going to cost us over $50,000 a year!”

Yeah, well…