The Week From Hell

As I sit at home on Saturday afternoon, with Sooty purring on my lap, and Snowball grooming my leg from under the table, the traumatic memories of the past week slowly start to fade.  Certain moments really have been traumatic, some even more so for my wonderful Matt, who didn't leave my side in the hospital.  

Last Sunday, I collapsed after getting out of the shower, with a nose bleed.  Our neighbours rushed to help, and call an ambulance, and one even came in the ambulance to the hospital with us.  I don't remember any of this; just getting onto my bed in my hospital room, and being told that i'd broken my nose, had a deviated septum and had a hairline fracture on my orbital bone (my eye socket),from where I hit the wall as I passed out.

I spent the next few days having all sorts of tests, and all brain and heart tests have come back clear.  so the doctors are just calling it an unexplained episode.  They see no reason why it should happen again.  Could be stress/hormone/too hot shower related/anything really.  It's great that the tests are all clear.  Unfortunately, because of my nose I had to have surgery on Wednesday.  Coming out of general anesthetic is probably the scariest thing I have ever experienced.  My brain woke up straight away, but my body took a while longer, so the doctors kept asking me questions, that I physically couldn't answer.  I couldn't seem to move either.  It was really horrible.

Then I had a day of panic attacks because I couldn't breathe properly, so I got some happy pills, which was pretty nice.  On Friday, they took out my nose 'balloons', which was very quick, but simply awful.

On the plus side, i'm pretty sure that i'm not scared of needles or blood anymore!

Our medical care here is really great.  I was on the international ward, so every nurse and doctor spoke perfect English.  The nurses were all lovely and really looked after me well.  In total, i've had nearly £13,000 worth of medical care!

I came home yesterday and Luke arrived yesterday too.  Our wonderful friends had cleaned the flat of blood, which i'd say was going above and beyond the normal conventions of friendship!  There is a dent in the wall that looks suspiciously like two teeth marks, which may explain why my two front teeth are still painful a week later.

So, I now have 6 lots of medicine to take every day, and have to go back in on Thursday to have my nose stitches removed, which I'm sure will be awful.  I'm on the mend though. I just feel like I have a really bad cold now, plus two black eyes.

Matt went to the pub last night with Luke and a few friends and Becky came over to babysit me.  Now, the cats are looking after me, while Matt and Luke have gone out for a few hours of sightseeing.  It's quite nice to be on my own for the first time in a week.

Anyway, i'm trying to slowly move on from my traumatic experience.  I'm signed off all of next week too, but have plenty of visitors lined up.  Everyone at work has been lovely; sending flowers, fruit, messages and love.  It really makes you realise how good our friends are here in China. We are very lucky indeed.

Anyway, here are some photos of me looking awful.  The bottom one was taken today, and apart from the slightly swollen nose, and very yellow eye, I look nearly back to normal!

Coco and D'Oscars

No, you haven't gone back in time; this isn't Snowball.  It's Coco, our special visitor for this week.

Here's how it happened... on Monday morning, our friend was walking past the pet shop around the corner from school, and heard a tiny miowing.  This little fuzzbucket was in an allyway, in a cardboard box, abandoned by some *insert rude word of your choice*.  I suspect he was the runt of the litter, and probably the only white kitten.  As soon as my friend told me about him, I knew what I had to do... persuade Matt to take him in. Actually, Matt took all of about 3 seconds to agree.  Our gorgeous Snowball and Sooty were both rescue cats, which means that someone with a kind heart took them in.  If they hadn't, they probably wouldn't be here today.  Especially Snowball.  He was even younger than Coco when he was found, and was sprawled on his tummy on the road.  It was our turn to do a good deed, and we knew that whoever ended up with Coco would be grateful one day to us, for rescuing him.  I had a free lesson, so I went out straight away, and his box was empty.  Looked everywhere for him and found him hiding in a bush.  He is so small, he can sit in the palm of one hand!  The pet shop had been feeding him, but there was no way they were taking him in; the shop is full of £1000 pedigree cats and dogs. No way they would take in a little street moggy.  So I scooped him up, and got a cab, with a very surprised cab driver who kept turning around to look at him whenever we stopped at lights.  I did get pee'd on in the cab, but maybe that's to be expected.  The mini one was purring away from the second I picked him up.  He just wanted a cuddle!

We still had all of Snowballs stuff from when he was tiny, including a crate/cage, so I chucked him in there with some food, which he instantly started eating (although the bowl is so big he had to climb into it to be able to reach the food!), and left him to it.  

Snowball and Sooty really weren't sure of him at all, and were quite grumpy, but Snowball eventually came around and was even playing with him.  Matt and I completely fell in love with him; especially Matt! 

I took him to the vets on Monday evening and the poor little thing had the full works done.  He had too many white blood cells, which he needed an antibiotic injection for, and he had an eye infection, which had left his face all scabby.  Snowball had this too when he was found - maybe it's a white cat thing?  So, eye drops three times a day.  I was in the vets for an hour and a half getting about 20 different things done. Anyway, now he is fine, if a little bit smelly and dirty.  We found out that he is a boy (thought he was a girl up to this point, and that he is only 4 weeks old!)

He is a really sweet little thing.  Very happy and playful, and he just purrs all the time when you cuddle him.  We decided that we couldn't keep him, so would foster him until we found a home.  I told everyone at school about him, and had some interest, even from people who don't like cats, just because he is so tiny and cute!  A friend of ours lives in the apartment upstairs, and she has been talking about getting a pet for a while.  Myself and another friend surprised her on Monday evening at her front door with Coco, and she really liked him.  So on Thursday evening she picked him up for a 'trial night'.  It's now Saturday and he hasn't come back to us, so it went very well!  She has agreed to foster him, but we are pretty sure she is falling in love and won't want to give him up.

So, it's been a very emotional 4 days with Coco (who is named after my drink of choice at Friday's Tequila Club - Coconut Margarita).  We were very sad to see him go, but he is only upstairs, and he has a good home now.  A happy ending, for a gorgeous little fluffball.  Here are some photos of his week with us.  The one below is just when I went to get him.  He seems to have different colour eyes, just like Snowball.  They are 2 shades of blue here, but Vicky told me yesterday that one has gone green, so it's definitely going to be yellow like Snowballs.  They could be twins they look so alike!

In other news, it's been a very busy couple of weeks.  School has been crazy busy! Here are a couple of photos from the last 2 weeks.  Tequila club...

Australian chocolate that our friend brought back for the office. We were very pleased! Chinese chocolate is not great...

This was Matt's May 4th, Star Wars themed flat crawl with his cricket club.  Thank goodness they only stayed in the flat for half an hour.  Still managed to make a lot of mess though. The floor was really sticky!

Last night was the annual D'Oscars ceremony, which is the Junior School's version of the Oscars.  In September the kids start making movies.  Different themed for each year, for example year 4 is on the environment, year 3 is animation, etc.  I made a film with my EAL class, but only one film per class goes through, and it wasn't theirs.  There is then a huge ceremony, where the winners are presented with trophies.  The films are judged by famous actors, directors and producers in Hollywood, and there were special good luck messages from some (apparently) very famous Chinese singers and actors.  The kids were going nuts!  It's themed every year,and this year was time travel, so the school was decked out in Dr Who, Back to the Future and Dr Strange props.  There is a red carpet, official photographers, and the entrance to the school was a giant Tardis.  It is the most ridiculous, extravagant evening ever, and we probably could have hired 3 extra staff for the amount of money it cost to put on this one evening.  They even hire in a gigantic high-tech screen and stage and lighting.   The kids get very bored, especially year 3s who I was with. The kids and staff have to sit on benches, while the parents get proper chairs, and it's on for 3 hours!  It's a huge black-tie event, and as you may have guessed i'm not a fan.  Mostly because it took about 3 weeks of lesson time to make our one film, that didn't even get through to the finals, when I should have been teaching my kids how to speak English!!!  Part of me secretly enjoyed the giltz and glamour- the parents really go to town in sparkly ball gowns and dinner jackets - but only a really small part!

I got home from work on Friday at 9.30pm!  This was my reward...

The other thing that happened recently was that I took some engagement photos for two colleagues who recently got engaged.  It was such a hot day we were only out for 25 minutes, and we just did them in the grounds of our apartments, but it's payed off; yesterday they booked me as their wedding photographer for their Richmond park wedding next summer.  I'm thrilled!  Here are a few of my favouries from the shoot, and you can see the rest on my website www.fayesphotos.com

Disney and Days Off

Things at work are stepping up, and we are super busy!  Everyone in fact is super busy. The days just seem to whiz past at lightening speed.  On Thursday, we were back at school in the evening for the year 7-9 performance of Labyrinth.  The kids were amazing, but the story is just plain weird!  There was free wine, which helped the story line a bit, and the kids really were very good.

On Friday after school we decided to make use of our season tickets and pop along to Disney for the evening.  We left straight after school, and were there by 4.15 enjoying the sunshine and soaking up the atmosphere.  Delightful!

The new Toy Story land opened on Thursday, with 3 new rides, all of which had huge queues.  We did manage to get on Woody's Roundup, which was very cute.  We also went on Journey to the Crystal Grotto, another cute kids ride.  Other than that we just wandered, enjoying being out and about.  Of course, we stopped off at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and a few mojitos, followed by a 'Tuxedo' cheesecake, which is a layer of chocolate fudge cake, a layer of chocolate cheesecake and a layer of white chocolate mouse.  Yum!

On Saturday, Matt was out all day at a leaving/stag party for one of his friends.  They did bubble football, where you play football in a huge inflatable ball, then went go-karting, and then ate a whole lamb between them at a Mongolian restaurant.  The guy whose party it was unfortunately broke his ankle while playing bubble football!  So not such a good day for him!  Matt enjoyed himself though, and didn't get home until 1.30am!

I spent an hour on Saturday taking photos of two friends at work who recently got engaged.  They were super nervous, but said that they had enjoyed themselves in the end.  I really enjoyed myself, and it was a good challenge getting them to relax enough to get some great photos.  I'll post them once I have edited them - I now have Lightroom, and editing software, which is my new favourite thing ever! Love it!

On Sunday, we just chilled out at home.  Monday was a strange day because we are off today (Tuesday) for the bank holiday.  So, lots of kids weren't in yesterday.  It was my good friend Amy's last day of work, so we have an office party, and then went to an impromptu Monday-Tequila club, and got rather drunk on margaritas.

So our day off today has just been pottering around. We went to the supermarket and did some washing, that sort of thing.  Lots of cat cuddles and generally sheltering from the pouring rain and the awful pollution.  It feels like a Sunday - i'm going to be so confused tomorrow with my timetable!

Here are a few photos of the cats being cute/crazy.  Love Snowball's sleeping positions.