Bowling and Old School

It was a tough 'first' (technically it was week 2) week back at school.  It's always tiring starting the new year off, getting to know the new children and classes and waiting for teachers to get their planning done.  Let's just say that i'm glad last week is over.  It's only Monday and already i'm having a much better week!

This week the poor kitty cats both have a cold.  They are sneezing all over the place, and while Snowball seems to be OK now, poor Sooty is feeling especially sorry for himself.  He has been extra cuddly and sleepy.  We think that he is on the mend now, so we won't have to take him to the vets.  This is great, since the vets was where they picked up the sniffles in the first place!

At the weekend it was a friends birthday, so we went bowling, which I haven't done in years. It was really fun, and I scored my first ever strike! Whooo!  We then went to the Boxing Cat Brewery for dinner after, which included a delicious slice of peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake. Yum!

A friend posted the below photo on Facebook last week and it got me thinking about how long ago this was, and how I am now teaching children just one year older than this!  Scary!  Can you spot me in the photo?

A couple of weeks ago, I persuaded Matt to do a photoshoot in the local park for some photos to go on my website. Here is my favourite...

First Week Back at School

Last year people in my school joked that 'Dulwich time' moves faster than normal time, and I politely laughed along.  Now, suddenly it's the start of my second year here and the first year seemed to whiz by at lightening pace.  'Dulwich time' is to blame.  We must have some sort of black hole going on over the school.

The first week back was a bit of a struggle for me.  For some reason, i've been absolutely fine and experienced no drug side effects since the seizures started 2 months ago.  On my first day back at school, all of those side effects seemed to hit me in full force.  I've had a nightmare of a week, made even worse by one of the cats *cough* Sooty *cough* eating some wool and vomiting in the middle of the night on Thursday.  I had to spend Thursday morning, not in class like I was suppose to be, but at the vets, with both cats (not knowing which had been sick) having them X-rayed.  They kept them both in over night just to make sure the wool hadn't wrapped around anything important in their stomachs.  It was, of course Sooty - I knew that before we took them there! Poor Snowball had to suffer the vets for no reason.  Anyway, they are both fine and home, and are all over us being cuddly and meowing in a cute way.  It's hard to hold a grudge against something so cute.

Matt played cricket at the weekend, and came home very merry on Saturday.  I had brunch with Becky, which was lovely.  We spent the rest of the weekend just recovering from the first week back.  The kids were only in for 2 days, but we were both exhausted!  I was looking forward to today much more than last week because my classes started properly today. i'm much better off when i'm busy and have kids to look after.  My classes all seem very nice (ish) and i'm happy with my timetable.

Anyway, here are a few more photos from the party last weekend, and a couple of Snowball being cute.

The Big 30!

So I am now officially in my 30s!  I feel exactly the same, or even better than the last couple of months, so i'm taking that as a good sign of things to come!

Matt was back at work on Monday, while I had a couple of extra days to laze about with the kitty cats.  I went back on Thursday, and it was so lovely to see my wonderful office buddies.  We have 2 new members of the EAL team, who are both lovely and very enthusiastic, so I know it's going to be a great year.  I'm feeling very positive about everything, which is wonderful.  It helps having had a hugely successful party last night, but more on that in a minute.

The above photo is from Matt's catch up with his good friends here.

Friday was the day that my office chose to celebrate my birthday, together with Sylvias, whose was at the end of July.  Sylvia has a white cat, and I of course, have Sooty and Snowball, so our cupcakes from the office were just perfect for a pair of crazy cat ladies!

This was a photo of the office on Thursday.  You can see just how many boxes there were that needed sorting out. It was a complete mess! 

... no more boxes by Friday lunch time! We were super organised this year!

On Saturday, we started off by going to Jamaica blue for a pastry breakfast with Matt's parents, who got back from Beijing on Thursday.  They had a wonderful time, but were very tired having done lots of sight seeing!

Then Margaret and I went to get our nails done for the party - I went for sparkly pink!

I opened my wonderful presents, and Becky came over with some gigantic 30 helium balloons, which Sooty is terrified of, poor thing.

Then it was party time.  We had booked a room in Cloud 9 bar, on the 87th floor on Jinmao Tower, one of the skyscrapers in the centre of the city.   The view is completely fabulous!

We arrived early to put up some balloons and arrange the cake, etc.

In the end, 60 people turned up, which is 30 for me and 30 for Matt - the perfect amount for a joint 30th birthday party.  It's a lot of people!  So nice to know that we have so many good friends here.

We had a fabulous magician come for a couple of hours and he was a huge success. Everyone absolutely loved him, and i'm sure he will be the talk of school tomorrow.  Several people are wanting to hire him for parties now.  He really is incredible!  This photo really sums up peoples faces and reactions...

This, by the way, is the Grand Hyatt hotel, and a 54 floor drop to the lobby below.  We discovered Cloud 9 bar nearly a year ago, while trying to find this lobby for me to take a photo of it, and now, having been to the bar at least 5 or 6 times, I finally saw it for the first time!  It made me dizzy!

Me... having had an excellent magic trick done on me...  and by the way, wearing a dress I bought when I was 19.  Still fits!  Feeling pretty smug about that!

These are just the photos I have from my office friends.  A friend from a different group bought along his camera and took loads of photos, saying to me that since i'm the photographer usually, I deserved a night off, letting someone else take photos of me!  It was very sweet of him, and i'll post some photos once I have them.

All in all though, a wonderful night.

Matt Turns 30!

Last weekend, after getting back from Hong Kong, we went to the Westin for brunch, which as always was completely fabulous.  I felt the best i've ever felt coming out of brunch since I could only have one drink, so that's probably a good thing!

I met my contact there, who is going to give away some photo shoots as prizes, in return for some photos of the brunch in the next couple of weeks, so that was good too.

Matt got a cake because we were there near his birthday!

On Tuesday, Matt had to go into work for a meeting, so I met up with some lovely ladies for brunch over the river.  It was so nice to have a catch up.  I much prefer Shanghai when friends are around.  It can get a bit lonely during the summer holidays.

Matt's parents went off to Hangzhou for a couple of nights, and Matt and I didn't do much but slob about, making the most of our last few days of the holidays.

Matt's birthday was on Friday. We went for brunch at Wagas, down the road, and he opened his presents.  I got him a bottle of 30 year old whisky!

Unfortunately, he then had to go into work for the afternoon for a long meeting, which was pretty rubbish, but we made it up to him in the evening with a birthday dinner at Sechuan Citizen, a delicious Chinese restaurant, which does cocktails called Basil Drops, which are literally the most delicious things on the planet!

I also made cake pops, which were a bit of a disaster, but in the end didn't look too bad, and tasted nice.  They were meant to be a trial run for making 70 for our birthday party this saturday but i'm not convinced...

And here he is, now 30 years old!!! So cute