Space Unicorns and St Patrick's Day

What a busy week! No wonder it has gone by super quickly.  Less than 2 weeks now until Mum and Dad arrive, and only one more week until I go off to Beijing with 70 Primary school kids.  Scary!

I realised that I hadn't posted a few photos from various things last week, so here they are: The cone of shame!  The poor cats look so miserable with their cones on. Poor Snowball couldn't get his balance at all.  Anyway, they are all better now, and are no longer walking lampshades.

It was international women's day last week, and cupcakes were brought in for all members of staff.

On Tuesday, Matt and I went to Disney Town! We were trying to buy Disney passes with a discount, but that is only available for Chinese nationals (we were not very happy about this).  The cheesecake factory in Disney Town cheered us up though, especially the deep fried mac and cheese balls. Yum!  We will still get out Disney season tickets, we just won't get a £60 discount on them, which is very annoying.

Here are a few photos from Matt's football match last weekend.

These are all in the wrong order!  Last night, we went out for dinner with our friends and their two young boys. It was a steak house, and the food was delicious.

Morning tea at school this week. It was the Mandarin department's turn to provide the food, and everyone was really nervous because last time they brought in all the weird food, like chicken feet.  Very normal stuff this time, except for a sweet chicken pastry. Yuck!

Friday night was the annual Peace Centre Quiz night at school.  75 teams of staff, parents and students compete in a quiz, and all the money goes to charity, including raffle money, and a silent auction for student paintings.  It was a great night.  Our team were the Space Unicorns (based on a Youtube video song of the same name). So here we are in our onesies and covered in glitter.  We actually did pretty well, coming joint 9th place with none other than Matt's team!  He was with some men from the cricket team.  At one point we were 14 points ahead of them, so we really bombed the last round!  Never mind, it was a really fun night.

We went out for dinner before hand and I discovered Chimichangas, which are deep fried burritos - wow!

Last night, after the steak we went to the pub to watch the Ireland Vs England 6 Nations game.  The Irish Grand Slam was riding on it, and they won, which was nice for them on St Patrick's Day.  Our Irish friend was very pleased.

So, as you can see it's been a crazy busy week!  A good one though. :-)

Cranium Night

It was a long week last week!  I don't know why, and nothing bad happened, it just seemed to drag on forever.  So when Friday arrived, we were ready to celebrate with Tequila Club, which is me and 2 friends who go to Pistolera, a Mexican restaurant every Friday for margaritas. Yum!

On Saturday night, we went over to our friends house for a game of Cranium, which my team won, and Matt's team lost! Haha!  The cards were quite confusing; there was a question on each side, and the answer was on the bottom of the opposite side.  So everyone kept reading the opposite side's clue instead of the answer and the consequences were quite amusing - like Matt trying to draw a picture of 'anatomy' when he should have been drawing 'Atlantis'!  Very amusing.

The rugby World Cup was on after we played, so we stayed to watch that and didn't end up getting home until after 3am!

Sunday was a nice day - beautiful weather - We took the cats to the vets in the morning, and they got the all clear, yay!  They were terrified though.  I could feel Snowball trembling through his carry case.  And Sooty clung to Matt as if his life depended on it.  Poor lovelies.

Matt played football in the afternoon, and I went to watch for a bit in the sunshine.  Then we went for a drink in the pub nearby.  We sat outside thinking it was warm, but the sun went down really fast and then we were so cold!  We headed home to feed the cats, then went to the shopping centre next door for a pizza and to watch Black Panther at the cinema.  It was really busy, and Chinese people can be quite rude by British cinema standards - so there was constant chatting, people on phones, etc.  Bit of a nightmare, but the film was good.  We have bought a pass that gets us in cheaply; we just won't be going Sunday evening again in a hurry!

Brunch and Grumpy Cats

The first week back after the holidays was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  My children actually remembered stuff!  It came as quite a shock really.  I was told many hilarious and exciting stories about the children's holidays, including one of my boys who got stung by a jellyfish and had to pee on his own hand!!  It was lovely to see my office ladies, and the weather is really starting to improve.  At home in England everyone has snow.  Everywhere I look there are snow photos.  Right now, I am sitting on my balcony doing some crochet.  Every window in the flat is thrown open and i've had a bit of a spring-tidy.  I am one of those people who is really affected by the weather, so i'm in a pretty good mood now.  I'm usually in an awful mood after a holiday, so it makes a nice change!

One thing that added to my good week was a trip with year 4 to the Shanghai History Museum.  On Monday, year 4 will be creating their own museum (they have been making artefacts for weeks), so we were at the museum to look at how things are displayed, and labelled.  It was only a half day trip, but I love a museum, so I was a very happy bunny.  There were some great exhibits on ancient coins, fabric and ceramics.  The only problem was that the other visitors were constantly trying to take photos of the kids.  About 10 people at any one time!

On Friday evening, I went to the pub with 2 ladies from my office for drinks, and Matt went to a different pub - both were very pleasant.  On Saturday, it was a friends birthday, so we went to a Mexican place that had free-flow margaritas. Yum!  The food was great - chorizo, followed by churros!  We had a great time, until I got home and have had quite an upset stomach since - The alcohol can sometimes be 'dirty' in Shanghai, or the ice used can be tap water.  Bottled beer I think next time we go there. :-(

I took this great photo of Sooty and Snowball yesterday.  Our food order came in big paper bags, and the cats just love them.  Sooty really looks like he is king of this bag!  Snowball had turfed him out moments later.  They are so cute!

The reason I can be sitting with all the windows open, and the balcony door open is that the cats are not here today.  It's very odd not having them in the house - I don't like it at all.  They are both getting the snip today. We took them to the vets for 10, and will pick them up around 4.  They are not going to be happy bunnies later on!!!  I'll post a cone-head picture next week.