BBQs, Margharitas and Treasure Hunting

What a busy week! (as usual!)

The weeks just fly by here.  I can't believe it's another week done, and week 4 with the kids about to start.

We have been very busy this week, and very sociable.  On Thursday, we had a BBQ at our complex, which was lovely.  You do kind of forget that there are hundreds of people living in our complex who have nothing to do with the school.  We have people from other schools, from Disney Shanghai and we even have a block that is University housing for New York University, for students studying overseas.  The food was nice, even if the BBQ was slightly odd.  Whole fish on sticks, very hot peppers, slices of potato, and whole prawns were cooking, but not a burger in sight unfortunately.  There was a live singer, and we all got silly light up hairbands.  I love the photo above.  It is of pretty much every new member of staff.  The beer ran out at 7pm and so did the food, so a few of us went to Yangs Dumplings as we were still hungry.  It was a very pleasant evening.

Below is a photo of my lovely office ladies. It was a birthday this week of someone who doesn't like cake, but loves spring rolls, hence the candle in the rolls!

This is Matt at the supermarket, with a really tiny trolly...

On Friday night, I went to a Mexican restaurant for a couple of coconut margharitas with the office ladies.  The rest of them were in a phonics course, running Thursday and Friday 3-6, and Saturday 9-4.  We were very mean, sending this photo half way through their Friday evening learning!

Meanwhile, Matt was in the head's office drinking champagne with the senior management team to celebrate one month on the job.

I met him later in a bar called Blue Frog, where we chatted with a few friends, before heading back to one's flat for pizza and to watch Dodgeball.  A very nice, chilled evening.

Saturday, was the epic treasure hunt, organised by the social committee.  What a great day.  

The below photo was what we saw on the way to the meeting point - a new build of apartments, where they have incorporated trees into the architecture.  China are incredible at building.  It takes a whole to make decisions on building, but once permission is given, they build so quickly.  It was mentioned this week that in the time it has taken for the UK to dither about building a high speed railway line, China has built a full 15 line underground tube system.  Incredible really.  

Notice in the bottom right of the photo, the single bicycle with a huge amount of recycling on it!

So, back to the treasure hunt.  We started off in a gallery area called M52, full of galleries and shops, some quite famous. We were teamed up with another married couple in secondary who I didn't know.  It was actually really nice spending the day with new people, who we got on with really well.  We were given 8 pages of questions and tasks to do throughout the day, and off we went.  There was also a sheet of animal photos that we had to photograph and tick off along the way - some were grafitti pictures, some were restaurant signs.  Lots of tasks were to get photos of every member of the team doing something, which meant handing our phones over to complete strangers for them to take photos...

... a small side note...  weird Chinese photo of the week goes to...this crazy street sign, which I assume is art, but it's China, so you never know.

The below picture is in a gallery called Island 6, which is quite famous.  All of the pictures had an element of moving graphics in them, like this one where the lady danced on the washing line.  There was a picture of a vase too that changed colour if you clapped near it, and a statue of a bear that roared if you went near it.  A fantastic gallery.

These were a few of the tasks - take a photo posing like the lego bear.

Take a photo on 4 floors.  If you look very carefully, we are each on a different floor.

Take a photo with the couple of the bench.

This dog was one of the animals we had to spot along the way.

3 hours in we were the second group to reach the half way watering hole.  This bar was great.  The walls were lined with fridges with beer from all over the world, at very cheap prices.  We ended up staying for an hour and a half, and by then had lost quite a lot of steam.  There were videos we had to do along the way.  One was to break dance in front of a statue.  We did that one, but decided not to do the others, worth 2 points each.  If we had done them we would have come 3rd place overall, but as it was we were 4th, so just missed out on a prize.  It took us 6 hours all in, and we were exhausted by the time we got to the end bar, Cages, where we had been before.

This was a strong contender for weird Chinese photo of the week - this man dragging a HUGE wagon full of chairs!

We ended up getting home at 2am, after 15 hours on the go.  An exhausting day, but such good fun!

Today, we have taken it easy.  We went out for dinner with a couple of friends, just around the corner from our building to a very local canteen, where there was no English.  We ordered noodle soup, delicious dumplings, and beef in a black bean sauce.  Delicious food, that cost us £3 each!!!