Ireland

Things have been so busy,  I realised that I hadn't posted for a while!  The last week of term was the usual blur.  I managed to get a stomach bug on the Wednesday night, so was actually off sick for the last two days of term, having been forbidden to come into work by my head of department and the deputy head of Junior School, just in case i made everyone else sick too!  So, unfortunately I missed all of the fun of the last two days,including Ann and Sylvia's last days in the office.  Sylvia is at least still living just around the corner, but Ann will be moving to Thailand, and I will miss her very much!  We will definitely keep in touch though.

Our flight to Dublin, via Heathrow was at 1am on Saturday, so we just stayed up really late.  Once the food had been around it was about 3am, and we were ready to sleep.  I woke up when they turned the lights on for breakfast a couple of hours before we landed.  A nice easy journey.  We were at Heathrow (in a Wetherspoons with a sausage sandwich) for an hour, and then it was another hour on to Dublin, and a 4 ish hour drive to Castletreasure, which is just outside Cork, to see our wonderful friends who left China at the end of our first year.

It was so wonderful to see them!  We really have missed them so much this year.  Shanghai just isn't quite the same without them.  They live in Saudi now, but spend the summer holidays in Cork in their tiny cottage, known as the 'Moldovan farm house'.  It's falling down and will be demolished in 4 years when they return to Ireland for good.  But for now, it is what it is; cold and full of spiders.  But with friends like these and a warm fire, what else do you need.  Well, one of them is Australian, so a BBQ, obviously!

The weather in Ireland is so odd.  We had one day of blazing sunshine, and then the only full day we had here, it was so cold I was wearing the thermal i'd brought with me for Africa.  Seriously cold!  We spend the day driving along the scenic routes and visiting the super cute town of Kinsale,with it's brightly coloured houses.

We stopped at this point for lunch in the hotel that our friends got married in.  It was beautiful there!  But so cold!

We played board games and chatted in the evenings with our favourite kids.

After two nights, we moved on to Athy, which is about an hour south of Dublin.  This is where our friends who we worked with in Germany live. It was wonderful to see them too.  We went to a castle for drinks on the first afternoon, followed by an amazing pub lunch of fish and chips.

They live in a lovely house right next door to Maev's sisters and parents.  We spent our first evening at her sisters playing pool and darts.  They are building a house just down the road, and in 3 weeks since they broke ground, so much has gone up. The foundations are completely finished already.  It's very exciting for them.

On our full day, we did a 4 hour hike at this beautiful place an hours drive from their house. It's called Glendalough, and was an old mining town before it was abandoned.  The views were just stunning.  And we had perfect weather for it.  It was so nice to get out into the fresh air.  You can really taste the difference from Shanghai!

Matt brought this lensball in Shanghai and insisted on taking it with us.  I thought it was very silly, but now I love it and want to take it everywhere!

This is Pete's dog, Sam. She's such a poser...

We flew back to London city on Wednesday morning, and have just had a relaxing couple of days pottering around.  I went to Richmond to see the venue for the wedding I am photographing tomorrow.  We spent today in London, seeing an MS specialist, getting our VISAs for Mozambique and our anti Malaria tablets, and having lunch with Matt's uncle. We even saw Matt's granny yesterday. It's been nice.

Fruit, Football and Photos

 It was an interesting start to the week, what with me having a seizure on Tuesday evening.  Luckily, I was at home with Matt right next to me, so it wasn't too bad. I didn't even have to go to hospital afterwards, which made a nice change.  It set me back for a good few days though.  Matt and I were both off on Wednesday and Thursday and were back into school on Friday for a quiet day.  Matt was having an admin week anyway because all of the senior school students and teachers were off on Challenge Week.  Matt didn't go, specifically so he could keep an eye on me, so it's lucky the school were OK with it!

Friday was World Book Day in the Junior School, and everyone was in fancy dress.  My office went as characters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I was Violet Beauregarde, in her blueberry form.  Good job I had got my costume finished on Monday!

The weekend was a bit of a strange one, with lots of little bits and bobs going on.  We were still a bit thrown by the seizure on Tuesday, so didn't really know what to do with ourselves on Saturday.  We ended up going for a walk and having a drink in the bar next to where we live.  It's our local and so we ran into several different groups of friends, who we ended up having a drink and a chat with.  It was nice and really cheered us up.  I also got my hair cut in time for the holidays.  There was a school social on Saturday evening, but we decided that a trip over to Puxi was just too much after the week we'd had!

Here are the guardians of the bathroom, who were also rather unsettled by Tuesday.  They seem to have recovered now though.

Matt popped out for a couple of hours on Thursday night to our friend, who was home alone with his 1 year old for the week.  They had a BBQ and Babysit evening.  Tizzy loves Matt, so they were both quite happy.

Yesterday, I was out in the morning doing a photo shoot for my office colleague Joanna and her husband and two daughters.  They are such a cute little family, and the girls are so adorable, so it was a very happy hour spent at Century Park.  I'm editing the photos now, but i'll post the finished ones soon.

Yesterday evening, Matt went along to watch the final day of his football team's season.  He hasn't been able to play for several months because of his broken wrist, but since he is taking over the management of the team next season, he went along to show his support.  The team won the day and so got a trophy and were also presented with their trophy that Matt did help win from earlier on in the season.  We then all went to Hooked, their sponsor restaurant in Puxi for delicious fish 'n' chips.  The team were all really nice, and I enjoyed my evening out.

Now, it's our final week of school!  On Friday we will be heading to the airport for a 1am flight.  We've just found out that we will be sat next to Gary, Helen and baby Tizzy on the flight, so Matt's babysitting skills might come into play sooner than expected again!

Bull and Claw Brunch

It is the Dragon Boat festival this weekend in Shanghai, so the whole country had Friday off work, whooo!  Love a long weekend - especially two weeks before the end of term, when everyone is dropping like flies because they are so exhausted.  Matt and I are hanging on OK though.  Looking forward to our summer holiday.

On Friday, we had a lazy day, going to the gym and playing with the cats.  In the late afternoon, I had a photo shoot with my friend from work, her husband and their son.  I'm still editing the photos but will show you some when they are finished.  Matt and I met up for a salad at the Blue Frog afterwards (amazing white sangria) and then Matt went off to meet his friend in a pub to watch the tennis and I headed home to watch Downton Abbey.

On Saturday, we had brunch at the Bull and Claw with a mix of friends from different groups.  It was lovely, and nice for those who can drink, to relax on a Saturday that felt like a Sunday!

Today, we are just relaxing again, editing photos, and playing with the cats.  We are both doing the Couch to 5K running app, so we went to the gym.  We also went to the fake market to get my bridesmaid dress taken up, and my watch fixed.  Little jobs that have been on our list for months!

Only two more weeks of school left to go now.  Matt isn't going on Challenge Week, so he will have a week of admin and odd jobs, while the rest of the senior school are out on school trips.  My lessons will start to get disrupted this week with assemblies, etc. Then we will stop our lessons all together in the last week, and spend the last few days packing up our office for painting during the holidays.  Busy busy busy!

Founder's Day

Last week we had Ann's leaving meal.  It's so sad that we only have her for another 3 weeks before she retires to Thailand/London.  We went to our old haunt for one last Tequila Club.  Ann made a speech about everyone.  She mentioned that I was a published photographer! And said, 'Tequila Club Forever'.  My part of the speech was pretty tame compared with what she said about some of the others in the office! It was very amusing.

On Friday night Matt went out to the pub for a pub quiz, organised by one of his friends. Him and his team-mate ended up getting 22 points out of a possible 22, and they even got a glass trophy!  He went straight out after school and got home at 4am!

Saturday, was our (London) school's 400 year anniversary.  We have a big celebration for staff, students and parents every year anyway.  There are games and activities, that staff have to work at a stall for 30 minutes for. Matt and I were on an inflatable sticky wall, and it was just lots of kids I teach, so I quite enjoyed my 30 minutes, and it went by really quickly.  There was a dog show too, and then a huge concert as it gets dark.  It was a little colder than last year, but luckily it only rained for about 3 minutes.  The forecast was lots of rain!

We brought our picnic blankets, ate some of the delicious food on sale there and drank some prosecco, while listening to the over 100 piece orchestra and choir sing land of hope and glory. It's like the last night at the proms. Very spectacular.

Yesterday, we didn't do much.  Just rested for the day, and had a small wander around the shops.  This week is only a 4 day week, so we only have 14 more days of school to go! Whooo!

This is the professional photo we got from the ball last weekend. It finally came through...