Wuppertal Zoo, Cocktails and Rubber Ducks

This week has been very busy!  I'm not sure that I have quite recovered from my hectic weekend last week with the girls.  It's been very hot here in Germany this week, and Friday especially was sweltering.  We had a storm on Saturday, but it doesn't seem to have cooled off a huge amount.

On Wednesday and Friday mornings I was in with the Nursary children.  I really dislike being in with the Little Dragons, who are a year younger, so I was dreading it, but I actually really enjoyed myself.  It was a nice break from the age groups that I normally work with.  They do lots of fun activities, and I just picked a table to sit down at and joined in, chatting with the kids and doing some Disney colouring.  On Friday, they spent the entire morning playing outside, it was lovely.  We made Gruffalo cupcakes too which was fun, and so messy!  I couldn't do it every day, but once in a while, it makes a nice change.

On Thursday I went on the Year 5 trip to Wuppertal Zoo and on the Schwebebahn.  This is the oldest Monorail in Europe.  It's a bit like a roller coaster when it goes around corners!

The zoo was really nice, apart from the fact that it is (like the whole of Wuppertal) on a very very very steep hill.  I got a serious amount of exercise on Thursday!  We had a tour when we arrived on coastal animals, which was a bit pointless really.  Apparently the other group's tour guide was really good, but ours was just like 'this is a polar bear, here are some penguins, this has nothing to do with the coast but lets look at a sloth'.  The children got a bit restless, as all they wanted to do was run around and see as much as possible.  We had a nice picnic at lunch time, and then we split into groups to explore.  I had 6 boys in my group, including the 2 who are very hard work, but who I really like.  They are hilarious!  One of them gets bored very easily and was likely to run off, so I hatched a cunning plan... I gave him my camera.  With a little bit of responsibility the boy behaved brilliantly.  Consequentially, I had 700 photos when I got back - a selfie of every child in my group, lots of pictures of the floor and blurry animals in the distance (he didn't work out that there was a zoom).  The pictures are so funny and it's a shame I can't share them with you because they have children in them, but here are some of the best animal ones...

The Polar Bear was gorgeous.  She was playing in the water, pushing the ball up through this floating platform, and jumping from the rocks into the water.  She was the happiest Polar Bear I have ever seen at a zoo, which was lovely. Normally they are just pacing back and forth, and seem a bit miserable.

On Saturday, my lovely friend Al had a cocktail party at her flat, which was so much fun!

Here is a nice photo of the 'Hague gang'.  

 Sunday was the annual Duisburg Inner Harbour duck race and dragon boat racing, which of course was a must for me.  I went with Sean, and it was fun to see the ducks and the dragon boats racing!  We went for ice cream too, and then Matt and Luke met us there for dinner (huge pizzas again!).  Matt and Luke had been in Cologne for the day, climbing the Cathedral tower and visiting the Nazi Museum.

The ducks are all entered by local businesses.  I particularly liked the below one, which is based on the famous statue in Duisburg town centre.