Brunch and Korean BBQ

What a week!!!

School officially started on Monday.  I was a bit nervous about starting classes, but we are still so tired that I slept really well (unusual for me) on Sunday night.  Not all of my classes started on Monday, so it was a gentle ease into the week.  I don't know what I was worried about.  The kids are fantastic.  Super cute and charming and hilarious.  Even the intensive English classes seem to speak really good English, which is fab.  I had them writing holiday diaries this week, to assess what they could do without too much help.  Some were really good, others not so good, but very obvious where they need help. My biggest class is 5, but there could be a range of levels within one class because they are grouped by age/year group, not level.  All fab children though.  Even my naughty little year 4, who is a fidget and gets distracted very easily.  I feel like he might have ADHD.

On Thursday after school there was a CCA expo (Cross Corricular Activity - clubs basically).  A selection of people were asked to run a stall, and because my Archaeology club is new, I was asked.  We only had 2 days to prepare, but I made a poster and brought in some tools, coins, and borrowed some jewellery, pots and archaeology books.  I even wrapped an orange in bandages, as we willbe mummifying oranges at some point.  I printed a few dig pictures too, as I am getting a patch of ground to dig up.  My stall was one of the most popular.  I had a constant stream of children and parents asking about the club.  Two year 4 boys spend 20 full minutes talking to me about archaeology and telling me absolutely everything they knew about history.  I'm pretty sure they will be in my club!

Thursday night we went to a bar with 4 new friends for a chat and a couple of drinks.  We barely see anyone at work because we are all so busy and the day goes so quickly that we needed a catch up!

After a hard week of work we needed a bit of a blow out at the weekend.  Friday after school there was a staff BBQ at our lovely Early Years campus.  There were delicious burgers and chips and salad and lots of beer.  It was lovely to relax and chat.  Matt and I ended up going to a bar called the Blue Marlin with the Music department after the BBQ, and somehow ended up doing flaming shots and drinking quite a lot of cocktails!

On Saturday, it was a new friend's birthday, so we went to Funkadeli's for brunch (brunch is a huge thing in China).  You could order bottomless prosecco for £12, and choose from a list of mains/sides.  I had a delicious kale and avocado salad with aubergine, tomato and mozzarella for my side. Super yum.  All we seem to do is eat in Shanghai.  It's the best place I've ever been to for food variety.  We still seem to be loosing weight though, it makes no sense!  It's literally falling off us. I bought a dress over that I couldn't fit into on my first day.  I wore it yesterday and it fit amazingly well!!!  Anyway, I digress.  The brunch was lovely, and afterwards we moved onto a bar called Kartel.  On the walk we decided to go into a tiny bar that could only just fit us all in.  Someone ordered Jaeger bombs, and they came in Borussia Dortmund glasses!  They are a football team from very close to where we lived in  Germany.  How funny that they should be all the way out in this random miniscule bar in Shanghai!

Kartel, where we went later was a fabulous rooftop bar with a great view of Shanghai and delicious Margharitas.

Matt joined us in Kartel, but during the day he had been off on his own adventure at a Whisky festival.  He paid £20 to get in and was given a full sized bottle of Glenmorangie, who were sponsoring the event.  Then all of the samples were for free.  He went with returning members of staff from secondary, so it was nice for him to socialise with different people.

He had a lovely time, and looks all too pleased with himself in this giraffe costume!

Weird picture of the week goes to our local supermarket. Above Matt's head there is a conveyor belt that takes shopping bags from the checkout back to the shop entrance!

Korean BBQ is my new favourite food.  What an eating experience!

We decided to go today for lunch/dinner, as it had been recommended to us by a few people.  It's fantastic.  You literally  have a BBQ in the middle of the table!  We ordered some garlic chicken, pork skirt and beef (which was the thinnest cut of beef ever).  They were beautifully seasoned and brought to the table raw, then you chuck them on the BBQ and cook as much as you want.  Then you wrap it in a lettuce leaf and dip in chilli sauce.  Yum!  There is an extractor fan over the BBQ, so it doesn't get smokey.  The food was just so delicious!  We also ordered curry rice, but they brought something else instead.  It was like gigantic rice grains about 3 inches long in curry.  It was good, but i'm not convinced it was what we actually ordered.